The One After Sherlock Gets High
by keeptheotherone
Summary: Set during His Last Vow. Molly has just broken an engagement; girlfriends aren't Sherlock's area. They're both working to rebuild their relationship after that fateful day in the lab, but the question is—are they aiming for friendship ... or something more?
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is a prequel to my fic **The One Where Sherlock Sleeps With Molly**. I know, I know, you thought I was going to write a _sequel_ , not a _prequel_. It's coming, I promise (see my profile for plans). Blame the Sherlolly Big Bang Challenge, which required the entry to stand alone. But look-I'm so excited to have fanart just for my story! **Story cover was drawn by Rebka18** (rebka18 dot tumblr dot com), and there is another fabulous piece too, which I will include when we come to that scene in the story.

Timeline for HLV is a nightmare, partly because there are conflicting dates for John and Mary's wedding: May 18th and August 10th (see Kizzia's "Meta: A Timeline for Sherlock Series 3" on archiveofourown dot org for a detailed explanation). I'm using the May date because I already had a story timeline worked around it before I learned about the discrepancy. I also used Kizzia's timeline for the intervals between events and owe her many thanks for her hard work, as well as my beta A-I had so much fun reviewing this with you!

Finally, in a stint of shameless self-promotion I'm totally blaming on Sherlock, I'm announcing that I'm doing something I've never done before and posting in two fandoms simultaneously. I seem to have separate followers for each fandom, but in case you'd like to branch out, I'm also currently posting a _Harry Potter_ drabble collection that focuses on George Weasley/Angelina Johnson and will have at least one additional chapter to add to _One Big Happy Weasley Family_ after that.

This chap is about an hour early, but I will update every Wednesday, as usual. Welcome to the madness!

* * *

Molly Hooper closed the door behind her now ex-fiancé, sank to the floor, and buried her face in her hands. She had just broken an engagement with the nicest man she'd dated in years; nice enough even to forgive her for stabbing him with a fork. At a wedding. Because he'd insulted the _other_ man in her life, the one who was neither nice nor her date and never would be. She gave a small moan.

The thing she'd liked best about Tom was that he wasn't Sherlock, and now she was holding that against him. Permanently, apparently, considering that her ring—Tom's ring—was back in his pocket at this very moment. Remembering the look on his face when she'd slid it off (not hard to do, considering Tom had never asked and she'd never had it sized), Molly wrapped her arms round her knees and let the tears fall.

 _"_ _This is about him, isn't it?" Tom stared at the diamond Molly held out to him but did not take it._

 _After a prolonged pause, Molly laid the ring on the table between them. "I'm so sorry. I wanted—I wanted this to work. I tried to make it work, but you deserve someone better than me."_

 _Tom gave a hollow laugh. "There is no one better than you, Molly. I've looked."_

 _Molly took a deep breath, pushing back the memory of a plain stairwell and a conversation about sociopaths. "You deserve someone who loves you completely. Someone who can love you back the way you love her. I—I just can't be that person. I can't marry you, Tom. I'm sorry."_

She was just working up to a good cry when her front door bumped her in the back.

"Molly?"

It bumped her in the back again.

"Molly, why are you sitting in front of your door?"

"Go 'way, Sherlock."

"Are you crying?"

"Yes! I'm crying and I'm emotional and unless you have chocolate or ice cream, I want you to go away." She sniffed and reconsidered. "In fact, leave the chocolate and the ice cream and go away anyway." The last thing she felt like dealing with right now was Sherlock and his childish demands for attention.

Her door bumped her in the back for a third time, but gently, and Molly found herself sliding forward as she was acted on by an external force. She stood up and turned round.

"Sherlock, please. This really isn't a good time."

"Why not?" He pushed past her and stepped into her flat. "I know you're alone. Tom just left."

Molly's lower lip trembled, and she made no effort to hide it. "Yes. He did."

Sherlock took a closer look at her, then half-turned towards the door. "Did he do something to upset you?"

She burst into tears. "No, it was all my fault! I made him leave!"

Sherlock looked over his shoulder and back at her. "I don't understand. If you wanted him to leave, then why—"

Molly held up her bare left hand, still sobbing.

"Oh." Sherlock rocked back on his heels. "Well, it's about—" He paused. "I mean, tea?"

"No, I don't want tea!"

The pitch of her voice halted his progress towards the kitchen. Molly swallowed the bulk of her tears and with effort, moderated her voice to something less than a shriek.

"I just want to be left alone to wallow in my misery and eat all the chocolate in my flat without any sarcastic comments about morphing from an old maid cat lady into a fat old maid cat lady. What I want is for you to go home, Sherlock. Please." Molly tried to look as pitiful as she felt.

"But—I need the space to work. I have a case."

She closed her eyes and sighed.

"It's an important one, Molly, the biggest case I've had since Moriarty. The personal freedom of everyone in Britain, in the whole of the Western world, depends on it. What's one woman's happiness in the face of all that?"

 _I hope you'll be very happy, Molly Hooper. You deserve it._

She should have known he was lying.

()()()()

Molly looked like she'd been punched in the gut, and her eyes filled with fresh tears.

This was why Sherlock needed John to not go on sex holidays, so Sherlock didn't make embarrassing blunders with people who counted. He scrambled for something reassuring to say; difficult at the best of times, but considering he'd been waiting for months for Molly to come to her senses and break up with Meat Dagger, he found it impossible to understand her distress. Her cooperation, however, was essential. Sherlock opened his mouth to tell her so (flattery, that always worked well with Molly), but she beat him to it.

"Fine," she said, her figure crumpling as she turned away from him. "Whatever. I don't feel like arguing with you."

Even Sherlock knew _fine_ was Not Good. "Molly—"

But she had already walked down the hall. Sherlock watched her go, half-dismayed, half-relieved. He would have appreciated her assistance as he began the case, but there was no doubt the elimination of her fiancé would aid his cause. He heard a door close (the bathroom, not her bedroom), and the tap turn on. Sherlock hesitated, then set his bag on the sofa and turned towards the kitchen. An hour later, when Molly exited the bathroom in her dressing gown, Sherlock gave no indication he noticed her presence.

But there was a cup of tea and all the chocolate he could find sitting on her nightstand.

()()()()

Molly staggered out into the kitchen the next morning rumpled and bleary-eyed. She had slept fitfully, her dreams a nonsensical mixture of past interactions with both Tom and Sherlock, leaving her confused and out of sorts. Sherlock sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her coffee table, analyzing the material he had spread out over the table, floor, and sofa. She could tell by his concentration and focus that he hadn't slept at all, and he still looked better than she did.

Which did not improve Molly's mood.

She grunted a greeting, which he ignored, and began her morning routine on auto-pilot. Coffee, eggs, and toast with enough jam to disqualify her from her medical license went a long way to restoring Molly to herself, and she looked over at Sherlock's new case as she used her crusts to wipe her plate clean.

"So, not a murder, then?" There were no autopsy reports, no crime scene photos, no toxicology results amongst the paperwork dominating her sitting room.

"Not murder, blackmail," Sherlock said, speaking for the first time. "The Napoleon of blackmail. Charles Augustus Magnussen."

Molly frowned, picking up her coffee mug and coming to stand at Sherlock's shoulder. "Isn't he the newspaper magnate called before Parliament?"

"Yes. And he's blackmailing one of the committee members, who hired me to retrieve the letters he's using against her."

"Why the wedding photo?" Molly asked, having just noticed the formal shot of groom, bride, maid of honor, and best man propped up against the center cushion of her sofa.

"Inspiration."

She looked at him expectantly but didn't press for an explanation when he remained silent.

"So, why my flat? Why can't you do all this—" She waved her hand to indicate Sherlock's makeshift not-murder board— "at Baker Street?"

"Because … I'm running another aspect of the case from my flat."

"What other aspect?"

"A private one."

"Mm-hmm." Molly took a drink of coffee. "Well, you can't leave this stuff here. You'll have to take it all into the spare room."

"Mo-lly," he whinged.

She raised one eyebrow.

"There's too many windows in the spare room."

"What do you have against windows? Other than the fact you can't get to those from the fire escape?"

She'd only been able to convince Sherlock to start using the front door rather than her bedroom window off the fire escape by dropping several heavy hints as to what he might be walking into when entering the bedroom of an engaged woman. Molly blinked away a memory of making love with Tom to find Sherlock giving her one of his patented "isn't it obvious?" looks before answering her question.

"Not enough wall space."

Molly surveyed the expanse of the paper-strewn area and had to admit Sherlock had a point. She knew perfectly well he hadn't taken any cases in the week before John and Mary's wedding last Saturday. If he had managed to generate this much data in less than seven days, he was going to need a big space.

Her space.

She sighed. "Sherlock…."

"Your room has lots more wall space _and_ room to pace. I like to pace when I think."

"I know."

"I need someplace I can enter and exit at will, preferably without disturbing you, as my hours will be even more erratic than usual. This case is going to go on for weeks, perhaps longer. I need someplace secure, someplace private. Someplace I can work without disturbance or distraction."

Molly looked from Sherlock's hopeful expression to the material spread over most of the flat surfaces in sight. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, giving up her room for a little while. Sleeping somewhere Tom hadn't, somewhere she didn't reach for him in that half-awareness between sleep and waking. Somewhere she hadn't shared with him, laughed with him, loved with him.

"All right," Molly said, setting her coffee cup on a closed folder. "You can have the space in my bedroom to work on your case. This one case," she said firmly. "This is not going to be a new habit."

Sherlock beamed at her. "Thank you, Molly Hooper."

"Don't make me sorry, Sherlock Holmes."


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I use all caps for texting, including instant messaging. Think of it like dialogue, with a new "speaker" on each line.

* * *

Molly sat curled in the side chair with her laptop, erasing her engagement from her online life as Sherlock and his papers swirled around her. He was moving his things from the sitting room to her bedroom, swooping in and out of the hallway with flamboyant grace and interrupting her to ask for tape and thumbtacks. Molly did not bother to tell him she would have to pay for any damage to her walls; he'd just offer her money and create the holes anyway, so she pointed to her desk in front of the window.

Tom had beaten her to both Twitter ("Can you sell used engagement rings on eBay?") and Facebook (his profile pic was now him and his dog wrestling over a Frisbee), and after seeing that most of his family had unfriended her, Molly had to resist the urge to console herself with cat videos on Tumblr. She changed her cover photo to a panorama she'd taken from the roof of St. Barts last summer at sunrise and after some internal debate, settled on cropping Tom out of one of the wedding pictures on her mobile to use as a profile pic. She updated her status, tweeted ("For all who have been wondering when I'm going to get married: me too. #singleagain"), texted Meena ("I'll be okay. Send chocolate!"), and was doing a final scan of Facebook to see how many additional friends she'd lost in the last thirty minutes when she noticed Mary Mors—Mary Watson was online.

HI, I HOPE YOU'RE HAVING A GREAT TIME! THE WEDDING PICS LOOK BEAUTIFUL!

HI, MOLLY. IT'S WONDERFUL, THANKS! WHAT WEDDING PICS?

THE PHOTOGRAPHER'S. SHERLOCK HAS A FORMAL PIC OF THE TWO OF YOU AND HIM AND JANINE OUTSIDE THE CHURCH. IT'S NICE :)

OH, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE! WITH EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED, I HAVEN'T EVEN SEEN PROOFS YET.

WELL, I DOUBT HE'S SUPPOSED TO HAVE IT … BUT HE'S THE ONE WHO CONFISCATED THE CAMERA, ISN'T HE?

When Sherlock came into the mortuary earlier this week, he had shared the details of what happened after he, John, and Mary left the reception so abruptly.

YES. YES, HE WAS. HE MUST HAVE DOWNLOADED THEM BEFORE HE GAVE IT TO GREG. TELL HIM UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IS HE TO POST THEM ANYWHERE OR SEND THEM TO OR SHARE THEM WITH ANYONE UNTIL JOHN AND I HAVE SEEN THEM!

NO MORE LAB TIME UNTIL HE'S SENT YOU THE PHOTOS. GOT IT ;)

HAHA, THANKS. SPEAKING OF WHICH, HOW ABOUT YOU AND I GRAB COFFEE IN THE CANTEEN THE NEXT TIME THE BOYS ARE AT BARTS?

I'D LIKE THAT :D

GREAT! CONSIDER IT DONE. TELL TOM WE SAID HELLO.

Molly swallowed. If Mary hadn't seen the updates in her feed yet, Molly wasn't going to tell her. This was a special time for Mary and John, a happy time. She didn't need to worry about a friend of a friend's broken engagement.

I WILL. SEE YOU SOON!

Molly signed out of her accounts and closed her laptop. She needed to get out of this flat, out of—just _out_.

"Sherlock?"

She stopped at the doorway to her bedroom. He had rearranged her furniture, shoving the bed all the way into the corner and stacking both her bedside cabinet and a small table in front of the bookcase, maximizing the free floor space. He stood facing her—or rather, facing the wall in which the door was located, analyzing the placement of the papers and photographs he'd tacked to her wall. Molly turned to look at it too and noticed that once again, the wedding photo took center stage with a small border of her blue-gray wall left blank around it like a frame.

"Sherlock, I'm going out. Do you want anything?"

"Mmm." He didn't look at her, absorbed in his creation.

"I'm going out, okay? You can help yourself to whatever's in."

"Yes," he said softly, stepping forward to move a newspaper article from the left of center to the right.

"Okay. I'll see you later. I have to work nights tonight, remember?"

He didn't answer, and with a resigned sigh, Molly closed both the bedroom and flat doors behind her.

()()()()

Molly burrowed further under the covers and clamped her pillow over her ears but the noise continued.

"Mrow. Mrow. Mrow." A pause, just long enough for her hopes to rise, before continuing. "Mrow. Mrow. Mrow."

Toby sounded neither angry nor resigned; if anything, he sounded patient, as if he could (and would) continue this all day. But Molly had to work tonight, and having been up since morning, she _had_ to sleep.

"Mrow. Mrow. Mrow."

"For god's sake, Sherlock!" Molly threw back the covers and opened the guest room door (could it still be called the guest room when the owner occupied it?). Toby turned to look at her from his post directly under the door knob across the hall but didn't come over. "Just let him in!"

Molly's bedroom door opened (apparently the guest room was still the guest room if she still thought of her own bedroom as hers even when she wasn't sleeping there), Toby dashed inside, and Sherlock's face appeared in the crack.

"What are you doing up?"

"I can't sleep because _someone_ is making too much noise."

"It's not me!"

"It's your fault! If you would just let him in, he would stop meowing."

"False," Sherlock said, and shut the door.

"What do you mean it's false?"

"Mrow. Mrow. Mrow." The same plea, only slightly muffled, as Toby now meowed to get out of her room. "Mrow. Mrow. Mm—"

Sherlock opened the door, and Toby exited and wound himself around her ankles. "Mmmrooow."

Not feeling very loving towards her pet at the moment, Molly ignored his plea to be picked up.

"I tested that hypothesis and found it false," Sherlock said. "The experiment has now been replicated a total of six times with the exact same results. At first, it appears to be a success, for when the door opens, the cat shuts up. She—"

"He's a boy," Molly corrected for much more than the sixth time.

"—Enters the room, jumps onto your bed, turns in a circle—presumably looking for you, though why she cannot—"

"He."

"—Deduce your absence I do not understand, as even your slight frame would be easily visible. At this point the cat jumps down, walks round the bed, looks accusingly at me, and proceeds to sit in front of the closed door and resume its Gregorian chant. When I let it out, it chants from the other side of the door. Accordingly, I have disproved your hypothesis and am now working on extinction."

Molly rested her head in one hand and closed her eyes. "Sherlock. Are you telling me you're trying to break my cat of the habit of meowing at my door in a single day?"

"Oh, I'm sure it will take much more than a single day. It is no doubt a deeply ingrained, highly conditioned beh—"

"Sherlock." Something about her must have testified to her testiness, for he actually paused at her interruption this time. "Leave the door open."

He stared at her.

"Leave the door open just wide enough for him to get a paw in. Toby's not used to my door being closed, whether I'm inside the room or not. I leave it open so he can come and go as he pleases."

"But—" Sherlock frowned. "You were trying to sleep. I closed the door so as not to disturb you."

"I will be much less disturbed if there is no meowing every two seconds."

"I don't like having the cat in here. She gets in my way."

"We can discuss what to do about _him_ tomorrow, but right now I have to be at work in four hours, and I haven't slept yet. Just crack the door."

As if on cue, Toby stopped his efforts to attract Molly's attention and stalked into her room between Sherlock's legs.

()()()()

Molly's alarm woke her from a deep sleep, and in the groggy disorientation of rotating shifts, it took her a moment to work out why she was waking up at twenty-two-hundred hours. Remembering, she silenced her mobile, pushed her hair out of her eyes, got up, and crossed the hall.

Toby lay on the remaining pillow at the head of her bed, a coveted spot she had never knowingly let him occupy since he coughed a hairball onto it inches from her nose. He was feigning sleep while planning his attack on the small ball of yarn Sherlock tossed in one hand as he stared at the information he'd posted on her wall. Photos, newspaper clippings, internet articles, handwritten comments, and sticky notes were now linked with what looked to be scraps from her yarn basket, exposed in the middle of the room. Molly decided Sherlock dealing with what was sure to become a maze of unwound yarn was a natural consequence of taking over her bedroom and did not warn him to put it away. She had just pulled open her underwear drawer when he spoke.

"What are you doing?"

"I need to get ready for work." She fisted the cotton in her hand, hiding it.

"But you agreed I could work in here."

"I still need access to my things."

"Get out." He grasped her upper arm and began steering her from the room.

"But … I have to get ready for work."

"The entire point of using your room was to have someplace private and secure. If you're coming in here every day, it is neither."

"But—" Molly stumbled as he pushed her over the threshold, and she heard the door close behind her.

She stared at the closed door for several seconds, not believing her own eyes and ears. She reached for the handle—locked.

"Sherlock, this is beyond ridiculous. Open this door right now."

"Ten minutes." Rattling sounds emerged, and Molly wondered if he were building a barricade.

"Sherlock!"

"Go take a shower."

"I need clothes!"

"You're wearing some."

"I can't go to work like this, and I'm not going to stand here and argue with you. Open this door and let me in!"

"We discussed it and you agreed I needed the space, Molly."

"But I do too. You can work and sleep in there, Sherlock, but it has all my things and I'm not—"

"If you don't hurry up and get in the shower, you're going to be late."

Molly did not need to look at a clock to know that was true, so she gave the door her best death glare (admittedly much easier to do without beautiful eyes looking back at her) and stomped off to the shower, slamming the bathroom door even as she knew the gesture would be lost on Sherlock.

He was so infuriating! She whipped off her tee and shucked her leggings and knickers, kicking them out of the way before stepping over to relieve herself. Not even twenty-four hours and she was already regretting her decision to let him stay. If Tom were here— Molly turned on the tap and flipped the lever to switch the water to the shower head. If Tom were here, he would have greeted her with a cup of coffee and her lunch would already be packed and sitting with her satchel at the door. If Tom were here, she wouldn't have to worry about how to get her things out of her room because she would have woken up _in_ her room. She stepped into the bath and stuck her head under the spray. If Tom were here, Sherlock wouldn't be.

Tears sprang up as Molly came to the same conclusion she had known for weeks, maybe even months, but only faced last weekend. Continuing her engagement to avoid her feelings for Sherlock was wrong, and more importantly, it wasn't even working.

She scrubbed her scalp hard, forcing her splayed fingers through the tangles, giving herself a reason for the pain. Because it hurt. It hurt to love Sherlock, it hurt to hurt Tom, and it hurt to know every bit of her life right now, including her single state and the narcissist in her bedroom, was by her own choosing.

Molly rinsed the shampoo out of her hair and wiped her face. She didn't have time to fall apart right now. She'd have to wait until morning, or maybe even Tuesday, when she was off again. She had her first-day-on-night-shift routine down to a science to allow herself to sleep until the last possible second, but science left no room for error, and it went without saying that arguing with Sherlock was error. Even if she skipped her protein shake and ran for the Tube, she was going to be pushing it.

Molly finished her shower quickly, dried off, clipped up her wet hair, and stepped into clean knickers, the only clothing she'd managed to retrieve. She shrugged into the dressing gown she kept on the back of the bathroom door and opened it to find Sherlock standing unnaturally close.

"Your things," he said, holding out her duffle bag with the pink skulls. "That should get you through the first three or four days, at least."

Molly set the bag on the vanity, unzipped it, and flipped through the contents. Several changes of clothes (she cringed at the thought of Sherlock in her underwear drawer), two pairs of shoes, her sleep mask, the novel she was reading, and a smattering of other personal items filled the bag.

"If I've forgotten anything, you can get it when I leave. I think you should have given yourself more time, Molly—even if you take the stairs, you're going to be late." He gave her one of his fake smiles, took one step to the right, and closed her bedroom door.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: The book Sherlock gives Molly is written by Caitlin Doughty. There is a draft of a _Sherlock_ script floating around that includes the additional dialogue in the drug test scene that I've used here, except the draft has it as "dark eyes" and I've used "blue." Benedict's eyes are many things, but I never think of them as dark (they're not always blue, either, but a girl's gotta draw the line somewhere). There's a lot of dialogue from "His Last Vow" in this chapter, actually, which y'all know was written by Steven Moffat, not me. Finally, a very big THANK YOU to **asteraceaeblue** and **allaboardtheships** for their detailed responses to my questions about drug testing on the Sherlolly Big Bang tumblr. Any mistakes (and deliberate deviations) are mine.

* * *

It was heartbreakingly easy to come home to Sherlock Holmes.

Yes, there were dishes to be carried to the kitchen if he'd bothered to eat that day, and his books and papers had a way of migrating from her bedroom to the various flat surfaces around her flat, and she had to remember to put the seat down before she sat on the toilet, but Sherlock had his agreeable traits too. He was always interested in what Molly had done that day. She didn't have to speak in generalities, or censure her stories to general office politics instead of autopsy details, or translate medical and science terms in her head before speaking them out loud. Sherlock understood all of that, listened attentively, asked intelligent questions. He appreciated the challenges of her job and her skill in resolving them, and Molly hadn't known that was something she'd been missing until she experienced it with Sherlock. He made conversation with her while she ate, even if he didn't eat anything. He shared books he thought she would enjoy (her favorite so far was _Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory_ ) and played his violin when she couldn't sleep (and when she was trying to watch telly, but Molly Hooper knew how to focus on the positive).

She tossed her keys in her grandmother's glass and silver tray on the entry table and dumped her striped satchel on the tufted bench on the opposite wall. Shrugging out of her raincoat, she hung it up to dry. Sherlock's Belstaff hung two hooks over, carefully draped to the side so its length didn't bunch on the bench below. Molly pulled the elastic out of her hair with one hand, dropped it on the tray with her keys, and turned the corner.

It also didn't hurt that Sherlock looked absolutely luscious lounging on her sofa.

Molly recognized his mind palace pose and took a moment to observe him unnoticed. He'd been out today; he was dressed in his uniform suit and dress shirt and his shoes (hanging about a mile over the arm of her sofa) were still on. Sherlock and Toby's truce remained intact; the tabby lay draped over the sofa back above Sherlock's chest. He either hadn't heard her come in or was ignoring her, so Molly walked through the sitting room and into her guest room.

She'd accumulated a decent wardrobe in here, pilfering things from her bedroom when Sherlock wasn't around, and now she changed out of her blouse and trousers, kicking her shoes into a corner and digging out some old trackies and a t-shirt. Feeling vastly more comfortable than when she'd arrived, Molly returned to the kitchen and began pulling together the ingredients for a stir-fry. Toby came to investigate, winding himself around her ankles before sprawling on his back in front of the sink, right where she needed to be. She indulged him, bending down to scratch under his chin and talking nonsense. She glanced to the end of the kitchen, where his water bowl and food dish were half full.

"That mean old Sherlock fed you today, didn't he, hmm? I think you're growing on him. Yes, I do. You're such a sweet thing, even Sherlock can't help but love you, eh?"

"She is not growing on me."

Toby's closed-eyed bliss ended as he raised his head and looked upside-down at Sherlock.

"It is simple efficiency. If I feed her, she shuts up. If she's quiet, it's easier for me to concentrate."

Molly ignored the incorrect pronouns (Sherlock knew perfectly well Toby was male and was trying to get a rise from her) and said, "Productive day?"

"Better than yours, by the looks of it." He brushed past her and got a bottle of water from the refrigerator. "Taken anything for that headache?"

"How—"

"You took your hair down. You don't usually do that until you shower or go to bed."

Molly smoothed it with one hand, then nudged Toby out of the way and began rinsing the vegetables. "It's not bad. I just need to eat. Do you want some?"

"I ate yesterday." He sat down at one end of her little two-person table.

"Okay." Molly didn't argue. She had learned if she put half again as much food on her plate as she really wanted and left an extra fork within easy reach, most of the time Sherlock would filch off her. "How's the case coming?"

"Well."

"I saw on the news today the hearings are focusing on Magnussen's relationship with the Prime Minister."

"Mmm."

She shoved the broccoli to one side and selected a carrot. "You've been strangely closed-mouthed about this one, you know. Who's your client? Celebrity? Royalty?"

"I cannot comment on an ongoing investigation."

She laughed. "You got that from Greg."

Sherlock gave her an impassive stare but his eyes sparkled.

"Well, if you're not going to entertain me with your exploits, make yourself useful," Molly said. She plunked a red pepper on the other side of the cutting board and extended the knife.

"That's not the only case I've worked this week," he said, not getting up from the table. "I can talk about a different one."

Molly waved the knife, letting the flat of the blade bounce against her fingers. "You can talk and slice at the same time."

Sherlock stood and slid off his jacket, then reached for the cuff to roll up his sleeves. Molly turned away abruptly, setting the knife on the worktop and opening the refrigerator. Two years without him and a genuine friendship after his return meant she was no longer stuttering and awkward in his presence, but sometimes…. She closed her eyes, letting the cold air wash over her face. She actually needed something from here—what was it again?

"Soy sauce."

"What?" Molly stood with a jerk. Had she asked that out loud?

Sherlock didn't bother to reply. Molly stared for a moment, watching his hands as he finished cleaning the pepper and began slicing it into strips, before she remembered she still had the refrigerator door open.

"Soy sauce," she muttered. "Right."

()()()()

Mary Watson pulled the car in front of the skip, interrupting John and Sherlock's argument outside the crack house. She didn't know what Sherlock Holmes was doing in a drugs den, and she didn't want to know, either. John looked like he could spit nails.

"In. Both of you, quickly!" Mary said.

John got in with a sigh, overriding Mary's protest to a skinny, scruffy junkie cradling one arm in the opposite hand and motioning for the kid to get in the back. Sherlock slid towards the middle with unmistakeable resentment, looking none too pleased when the injured boy greeted him as "Sheeza" and insisting he had been undercover.

Mary couldn't hide her amusement. "Seriously, Shezza, though?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes.

"We're not going home, we're going to Barts," John announced. "I'm calling Molly."

"Why?" Mary said.

"Because Sherlock Holmes needs to pee in a jar."

Mary caught Sherlock's reaction in the rearview mirror. For the first time, he seemed genuinely concerned about the trouble he might be in and not just petulant at being caught.

()()()()

Mary entered the lab.

Molly jumped up. "Where is he?"

"In the loo with John. I mean—"

Molly waved away the careless words. "How is he?"

Mary grimaced. "Sherlock's swearing, John's shouting … it's not good. Got a specimen jar?"

"Here it is. Is he—"

Mary took the jar already labeled with Sherlock's name and the date. "I'm sorry, I've got to get back before someone calls security. I'll tell you later!"

Mary rushed down the hall without waiting for a response, her fear that the argument would draw unwanted attention legitimate. She could hear them before she even turned the corner, and the air was blue with Sherlock's vilification. Mary banged on the door three times.

"It's me, let me in."

She heard the _snick_ of the lock, and John stepped back to make room for her. It was a single toilet, probably genuinely a cupboard before the advent of indoor plumbing, with hardly enough room for one occupant to turn around. Sherlock, a palpable presence at the best of times, was downright intimidating in the small space. Mary's one consolation was that no one had room to throw a punch.

John took the jar from Mary and shoved it in Sherlock's chest.

He threw it in the floor. "I am not pissing in public like a goddamn animal!"

"And I am not leaving you alone so you can tamper with the results!"

"You think I keep a fake dick and spare urine in my pocket on the off chance I'll be tested for drugs?"

"No, I think you're a graduate chemist and an experienced junkie." John bent down, squishing Mary against the door and pressing his cheek into Sherlock's side as he strained to reach the specimen jar, which had rolled under the sink. He shoved it at Sherlock again but did not let go. "Pee. In. The jar."

Sherlock crossed his arms and glared down at him. "Make me."

"I'll find a catheter!"

"BOYS!" Mary waited until she had their full attention, then looked directly into Sherlock's eyes. "Do I have to get Molly?"

Sherlock gave her a filthy, hateful look but relented, snatching the container from John's hand as he snarled for Mary to get out, complete with a vulgarity that earned a token protest from John, who was forced to step right up against Sherlock to give Mary room to open the door. But even as John stumbled into the door and it slammed closed, presumably from the force of Sherlock's shove, Mary smiled. She had been right.

Sherlock's reaction to John's announcement they were going to Barts wasn't about the drugs test; it was about _Molly_.

()()()()

Molly kept the microplate with its brightly colored wells hidden with her body, protecting Sherlock even as her own heart was breaking.

"What do you want me to tell them?"

He looked at her for the first time all morning. "Whatever you feel you ought to tell them."

He looked so much like the Sherlock of old, alone, aloof, adroit, toying with her affections, that Molly's anguish immediately changed to anger. She shifted, exposing the sample to John's line of sight.

"Oh, I see! You give me the big blue eyes and the deep, deep voice, and I'm supposed to lie for you."

"What are you doing?" Sherlock's voice held the faintest tinge of alarm as she reached for a clean pipette.

"Running this through the mass spec." Molly's hands shook as she transferred the diluted sample of Sherlock's urine into the small tube, and she had to remind herself this was just one sample out of thousands. Just another routine lab test.

"You don't need to do that." John's voice was quiet and held all the grief Molly was unable to express.

"It's the only way to quantify the results."

To determine how much he'd taken, in other words. As if she could measure heartbreak in nanograms per milliliter. Ha, more like _grams_ per _nanoliter._

The lab was painfully silent; even the two strangers John and Mary had brought with them were subdued, the injured one submitting to Mary's examination without a word. Sherlock slouched against the opposite end of the lab bench in a tracksuit and trainers, looking rougher than Molly had ever seen him … except minutes after his Fall.

John, hovering near the mass spectrometer as if his mere presence would speed up the results, looked as though he could happily push Sherlock over the edge again himself, and Molly was tempted to agree. The immunoassay had been blatantly positive, and the spectrometry was going to confirm the presence of benzoylecgonine and other metabolites in the urine. Sherlock had consumed—shot up, smoked, snorted, did it matter?—cocaine in the last three to five days.

He had been in her flat three of the last four.

Molly gathered flasks and beakers from around the lab, disposing of their contents and stacking them in the sink to be washed, the glass clinking gently in her hands despite her urge to smash something.

He had gone out, got high, and come home to her like nothing was wrong. He knew— _he knew_ —she would never tolerate his drugs use, never let him in the lab, never help him with a case if she suspected he was using again. So he had hid, coming and going when she was asleep or at work, sequestering himself in her bedroom, using the excuse of client confidentiality to avoid sharing his activities.

She plunged another flask into the soapy water and began scrubbing. She could feel Sherlock's presence over her shoulder, still magnetic and powerful even with the dead eyes and grungy appearance. She knew he was hurting, had known it from the moment she saw him walk off the Watsons' dance floor a month ago, but she had thought he was coping. She knew without asking that although Sherlock would not have been able to hide his drugs use forever, he never meant for John to find out like _this_. She knew too he was only pretending not to care, to distance himself from them, that their opinions didn't matter.

The noise of the glassware clanking against the sides and bottom of the sink echoed Molly's pinging emotions. How could he? How _could_ he? He had friends and family and meaningful work, how could he risk giving up all that? And his _brain_ , his beautiful beautiful brain….

The mass spec whirled to a stop. Molly rinsed her hands and dried them before crossing to the machine. She removed the printout and saw the results were unexpected, after all. With the discovery of multiple substances, Molly Hooper lost what little remained of her temper.

"Well?" John asked as she ripped off her gloves. "Is he clean?"

"Clean?"

Molly turned to Sherlock, who was studiously not looking at her. She walked over to stand directly in front of him and waited for him to lift his head. Once she had his attention, she raised her hand and struck him full across the face. Looking him straight in the eye— _I know what you did, and I'm not going to let you get away with it_ —she did it again, and just to make sure he remembered this through the haze of morphine and cocaine, knowing both would dull the stinging she felt in her own palm and fingers and wanting it to hurt all the way down to his cold hard heart, she switched to her left hand and slapped him a third time, swinging from her shoulder.

Sherlock gasped in pain, but Molly was not cowed.

"How _dare_ you throw away the beautiful gifts you were born with," she said, her voice shaking. "And how dare you betray the love of your friends! Say you're sorry."

"Sorry your engagement's over, though I'm fairly grateful for the lack of a ring," Sherlock said, rubbing his jaw.

He was trying to make her run. In typical Holmesian fashion, he was defending by offending.

"Stop it," Molly demanded, glaring up at him. "Just. Stop it."

John left his post by the mass spec to confront Sherlock, and as he turned the conversation away from himself towards John's new cycling habit, Molly stepped back, watching the scene play out until Sherlock's mobile dinged with a text.

"Finally! Excuse me."

She didn't believe for one second Sherlock's claim that the drugs were about a case, but rather a case was a convenient excuse for the drugs. And in that moment, as she watched him walk away from her, Molly Hooper thought she just might hate Sherlock Holmes.


	4. Chapter 4

Something was squeezing his arm. Tight and getting tighter, squeezing to the point of pain and beyond. Without opening his eyes, Sherlock reached over with his left hand—heavy, clumsy—and tried to bat the offensive squeezer away.

"It's okay, it's just the blood pressure cuff." Someone caught his hand and returned it to his side. "It's okay, Sherlock. You're in hospital."

The pressure around his upper arm released with a _whoosh_ , but there was still something there, something scratchy….

"No, let it alone."

His hand was returned to his side, held there with a gentle pressure until he relaxed.

"It's a blood pressure cuff, Sherlock. It's okay. You're in hospital." The same voice, John's voice.

John. John was okay, he wasn't shot. But there was something—something important—

Sherlock tried to open his eyes and groaned, turning his face away from the spotlight that pierced his lashes.

"Hang on, the nurse was just in here."

The drawn-out sound of metal on linoleum, footsteps, the click of a switch. Sherlock cracked one eyelid in the near-darkness, then squinted up at the figure leaning over him.

"John?"

"Yes, it's me."

Even in the dim light from the monitors and the nurses' station visible through the glass wall beyond his feet, the relief on John's face was obvious.

"You're not shot."

"No, I'm not."

Sherlock closed his eyes—so heavy—and licked his dry lips. He felt the pressure of a straw on his lower lip and opened his mouth, sucking greedily.

"Easy, easy," John said, withdrawing the water after only a couple swallows.

Sherlock opened one eye to glare his displeasure, but John actually seemed pleased at the reaction.

"You just came out of theatre," he said, setting the personal-sized jug on the cabinet behind him, out of Sherlock's reach.

Sherlock's eyelids closed again. What had they done, sewn weights to them?

"I was shot."

"Yes, you were."

"Here." He laid a hand over the spot that ached, although it was distant, at the edge of his awareness. He felt detached from it, sort of floaty … ahhh. "Morphine."

"Yes."

He hummed. "Nice dose."

"Yes, well, pharmaceutical grade into a central line. Makes a difference. Your veins are shit."

Sherlock considered this for a moment, the logistics of obtaining and hiding a stash while he was in here, but his brain was sluggish. Wouldn't focus. The hall lights were off, only task lighting at the nurses' station. "Wha' time 'zit?"

"Oh-two-thirty on Friday morning. You were shot just after seven on—"

"Wednesday." It was coming back—Magnussen's office, Janine, the shooter….

"That's right."

Sherlock moved to sit up—too sleepy reclining like this, he needed to wake up and _think_ , dammit!—but stopped before his body even left the mattress. A sharp pain stabbed all the way through his abdomen clear to his back and radiated up into his chest and shoulder, arresting his breath. Not a nice dose at all! What, were they injecting him with saline? He couldn't get enough air to demand more morphine, but John reached over and raised the bed with one hand, laying the other on his chest.

"Breathe, Sherlock. Lift my hand, just use your chest. There you go."

Once he stopped attempting to move, the pain subsided.

"Where's Mary?"

"What's this sudden fascination with my wife, eh? You called for her yesterday too, when you first came out of anesthesia."

So, it hadn't been a dream. Mary, blonde and blurry, demanding he not tell John she was the shooter.

Sherlock closed his eyes and shuttered his expression. "Baby."

And wasn't that a fine kettle of fish? Mary Watson, secret agent, blackmailed by Charles Augustus Magnussen and carrying John's baby. And Sherlock had vowed to protect all three of them. Somehow.

"The baby's fine. Mary's home, asleep."

John offered him another drink of water, which Sherlock accepted gratefully. Tired … he was so tired….

()()()()

It had been five days since Molly slapped the shit out of Sherlock in the path lab, and while that was enough time that the glassware and delicate instruments were no longer in danger, Molly was not at all certain she could say the same of Sherlock, were he to appear. From the moment John had called and said he wanted her to run a drugs test, Molly had known it would be positive, and she was unwilling to give up her anger (and hurt, and betrayal) to move forward. She was angry, dammit, and she intended to stay angry for a good while longer. It wasn't unusual for Sherlock to make her mad, but it wasn't often he did so with such thoroughness that she was able to stay angry, and Molly intended to take full advantage of the opportunity. In fact, she'd taken advantage of the empty quietness of her flat the last week to review her medical journals and her own sketchy case notes (the quality and quantity of which dropped off dramatically about a month into her relationship with Tom), looking for a new research project. She hadn't published anything since before Sherlock left three years ago, and while it wasn't a requirement of her job, exactly, she wasn't going to advance without it.

So, after a sandwich from the machine (chicken, never tuna), Molly was walking through the pathology building on her way to Barts' medical library when her mobile buzzed.

"Hi, John. Need something?"

"No, Molly, listen—"

She stopped dead. She knew that tone; it was the tone she routinely used with grieving family members and the occasional self-doubting physician. "What is it? What's happened?"

"It's Sherlock. He's been shot."

"Wh—what?"

"He's okay," John said hastily. "Well, mostly. Came through theatre all right. He's extubated. Still sleeping a lot, but responsive when awake."

"Shot? He was shooting up again?"

There was the denial. It wasn't a fatal injury, it couldn't be. Sherlock had just taken more drugs, and if it was morphine again, they could give him naloxone. It would reverse the effects and he'd be fine.

"No, Molly. A GSW to the upper anterior abdomen from less than ten feet. Hit the liver but missed the right lung, thankfully. He flat-lined in A&E, but—"

"Oh, my god." Molly groped with her free hand for something solid, found the window, and sank down onto its ledge.

"Molly? Molly." John's voice grew stern, the voice of a consultant surgeon addressing a house officer, a voice Molly had heard hundreds of times in training. "Doctor Hooper, pull yourself together."

"Yes. I'm sorry." She took a deep breath, straightened her spine, and just like that they were two physicians discussing a patient. "The right upper quadrant? A liver injury?"

"Yes, repair not resection."

"A single GSW? No multi-organ injury?"

"Right."

"Vascular?"

"No. Significant blood loss, obviously, but no vascular structures."

Molly nodded. That was good. Liver wounds always bled—even blunt force trauma, like from a driver's seat belt in a car crash, could cause bleeding and hemorrhagic shock—so the absence of any direct vascular injury was crucial.

"Vitals?" She was on the move now, heading for the nearest exit.

"Not bad. Afebrile. Heart rate one-hundreds with spikes into the one-teens, BP about one hundred over sixty."

Not bad, but not great, either.

"When did this happen?"

"Er, Wednesday evening. We were working a case, and…."

Molly stopped again, her brain trying to process the idea that Sherlock had been near death for _five days_ and she hadn't known.

"I, er—" John cleared his throat. "I'm sorry I didn't call you earlier. I was just talking with Greg—he came to visit, heard it through work, you know, and he said he was surprised you hadn't been here, and—well, I realized you probably didn't know."

"No," Molly said, forcing the word out past the lump in her throat. "No, I thought—I thought—"

Oh, god, the last thing she'd done was slap him across the face. If Sherlock—if he didn't pull round, his last memory of her would be one of anger and shame.

"Where is he?" She picked up her pace.

"The London."

The pressure in Molly's chest eased just a bit. Royal London Hospital saw more trauma than any hospital in London.

"And we're past the first twenty-four hours."

"Yeah," John said, his relief obvious. "We are."

He knew as well as she that eighty percent of the deaths from penetrating abdominal trauma occurred within the first twenty-four hours. They weren't out of the woods yet, but they'd crossed a major hurdle.

"Okay." Molly burst through the doors onto the pavement. "I'll be there as quickly as I can, but it's rush hour. Tell him—tell him I'm coming. Please?"

"Of course. I'll tell him."

It looked like Sherlock had managed to make her not mad at him anymore, after all.

()()()()

John and Greg stood up as soon as Molly entered Sherlock's hospital room. She had made good time.

"Well, I'll be going then," Greg said, extending his hand. "Let me know if I can do anything."

John shook it. "Yeah, I will. Thanks for stopping by."

Greg squeezed Molly's shoulder as he passed, earning a tense smile from her before she stepped to Sherlock's bedside.

"How is he?"

"Stable. He's asleep." Or faking it. Sherlock never had much patience for small talk at the best of times and had tuned John and Greg out when the detective refused to discuss his latest murder case.

Molly nodded. John watched as her eyes traced first over Sherlock before shifting to the monitor above his bed. She sniffed.

"I thought he was just avoiding me. After … you know."

John shuffled his feet. "Yeah, about that. I'm sorry, I know you would've wanted to be here. It was touch and go at first, and—"

"You just didn't think of me."

John reached out to her. "Aw, Molly, don't be like that."

"It's all right. I understand."

She gave him the even, patient look he'd seen her give Sherlock so many times, but it only made John feel worse. He wished Sherlock would wake up and talk to her.

John stuck his hands in his pockets, and they were silent for a few minutes. Molly took Sherlock's hand in hers. John tensed, expecting him to break the act and pull away. When he didn't, John wondered if maybe Sherlock really had dozed off. He hated to be fussed over.

Then John looked at the heart monitor, processing a change in the steady beeping before he was consciously aware of it. Still sinus rhythm but a little faster. He smirked. In that case….

"I'm really sorry," he said again. "Sherlock will be right pissed when he finds out I forgot to call you."

Not so much as an eye twitch from the allegedly sleeping patient. He was good, John would give him that.

Molly looked up. "Whatever would make you say that?"

John raised one eyebrow. Molly was not usually coy, and her confusion seemed genuine.

"He's rather particular about you." For all that Sherlock charged about London without paying attention to anyone else, he paid an awful lot of attention to Molly's habits, both in and out of the lab.

Molly stared at John for a moment more, then returned her attention to Sherlock.

"So much for the drugs, eh?" she said.

John smiled briefly, turning to Sherlock, and noticed Molly had done the same. She must have heard it too.

 _Don't make jokes, Molly._

"He'll be awake to say it soon enough," John assured her. _Or you could say it now and cheer her up, you git._

"You'd better be," Molly said, speaking directly to Sherlock. "I don't care about the drugs, or whatever dumb thing you were doing that got you shot, or the laxatives you mixed in Toby's bowl. I just want you to get better." Her voice broke. "You just get better, and I'll get you all the body parts you want. I promise."

Behind Molly's back, John grinned. _Carte blanche_ for the mortuary, and Sherlock couldn't admit to hearing it.

()()()()

Sherlock listened as Molly's footfalls faded away, waiting for an appropriate time to appear to awaken.

"Coward," John said.

Sherlock fluttered his lashes, then opened his eyes with several blinks and yawned. "Lestrade left already?"

"And Molly too, as you well know."

Sherlock could still feel the endorphins coursing through his bloodstream at the realization Molly didn't know. It had taken her days to visit not because she was through with him, not because he'd finally reached the limits of her good nature (as he'd been expecting since the day they met), but simply because she didn't know he'd been shot.

"Molly was here?"

John looked up from this week's copy of _The BMJ_. "I know you were awake. Your heart rate increased when she held your hand."

Oh, god, had Molly noticed? He had been concentrating on not moving, not visibly reacting to the softness of her touch.

"Just like that," John said, returning to his article.

Sherlock focused on the accelerated beeping from the monitor over his shoulder, listening as it slowed to a more moderate eighty-six beats per minute.

"Nice biofeedback," John observed. "I thought the change was rather obvious, but then I have been listening to it for days."

"Well, Molly's hardly used to monitoring her patients' heart rates."

John gave a small snort of laughter.

Sherlock picked up the brainteaser puzzle his parents had brought and began fiddling with it. A pissed off pathologist, he had expected. Molly Hooper slapping him not once, not twice, but three times? Standing toe-to-toe with him, ignoring his snarky and frankly insulting comment about her failed engagement? Telling him off in front of John and—others? How was he supposed to predict what she would do next when her last actions were so out of character?

"I thought she was still mad at me," he said quietly.

"That's what she said."

Sherlock looked up. "No, she didn't. She said she thought I was avoiding her."

"Yeah, because you were mad at her for taking you to task in the lab."

Sherlock focused on the puzzle in his hands. He wasn't sure what this churning in his stomach and heaviness in his chest whenever he thought of Molly were, but he was pretty sure they weren't anger. He knew anger. Anger was hot, explosive, active. Anger wouldn't prompt him to hide, to fake sleep when he'd been wondering where she was for days.

"You should have called her," Sherlock said.

"I'm sorry, Sherlock, I just didn't think. You—"

"How do you forget about Molly Hooper? She saved my life!"

John's jaw tightened, just enough to let Sherlock know it still rankled that he had told Molly—but not John—about his fall. John didn't even know what had happened in Sherlock's mind palace during the shooting, how his subconscious had instinctively and immediately turned to Molly for help.

Sherlock had been thinking about that for four days, and he still didn't understand why his brain had supplied him with Molly the pathologist, not John the former trauma surgeon and current best friend.

"You told Mrs. Hudson. You even told Mycroft!"

Overbearing, over-protective, overweight obstacle.… Sherlock shoved a wood piece of the puzzle into place. Mycroft knew the role Molly played; Mycroft could have told Molly. Sherlock added the oversight to the list of Mycroft's sins.

"Of course I told Mycroft. He's your brother! I would have rung your parents too, but I didn't have their number."

"You should have told Molly," Sherlock said. John was supposed to know these things. Instead, he'd called Mycroft. "Molly is important. She shouldn't have found out like that, like an afterthought."

"Okay, fine. Next time you get shot, Molly Hooper will be my first call."

Sherlock ignored the sarcasm, made the final move that separated the puzzle into its component pieces, and punched the button for more morphine.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Since this story is written, I've decided to speed up the posting :) Expect a chapter every Wednesday with an extra one thrown in somewhere around the weekend.

* * *

Molly sat down in the plastic chair at Sherlock's bedside. Judging from his breathing, he appeared to be genuinely asleep. The only dressings left were the simple bandage over his wound (no drainage) and the clear dressing over the central line in his neck (no redness or pus). Molly turned her attention to the PCA pump that controlled his morphine. His basal rate was a little high, but that was to be expected in a (former?) addict who had developed tolerance, and his attempts at self-dosing were only slightly above what he was allowed. The soft beeps of the machine as she scrolled through the menu must have been enough to wake him, for he stirred.

"Oh. It's you." He looked away.

His voice was raspy, so Molly stood up and reached across him for his water, which the nurse had left on the table at his good side. He accepted the drink, taking it from her when she would have held it for him, and returned it to the table.

The hand holding his PCA button twitched.

"It's okay. You can push it," Molly said.

He hesitated, fingering it, still not looking at her, then pushed the button to deliver a bolus of morphine into his IV. The silence dragged, a heavy, uncomfortable silence so different from their usual quiet rapport when working.

"I'm not sorry, you know," she said.

"For what?"

As if he didn't know.

"Hitting you."

A quick glance through his lashes. "No?"

Molly steeled herself. "No." Sorry it was necessary, but not sorry she had done it.

"I am sorry, Molly Hooper."

There were those blue-green-gold eyes she loved. _No, not loved_ , Molly corrected herself quickly. _Appreciated_. Merely appreciated, as one appreciates anything beautiful.

"Sorry for what, exactly?" She was not letting him off that easily, not this time.

His boyish expression twisted into a scowl, and he fiddled with the button again. Molly took it and held it in her own hand and his scowl deepened.

"It was for a case," he said sulkily.

"It was not."

"The case I've been working at your flat." He looked up from picking at a loose thread in his blanket. "You haven't moved any of my things, have you?"

"No, Sherlock. You know I haven't."

He relaxed slightly but continued to twist the thread round one long finger. "You were mad at me," he muttered, barely audible.

"Yes, I was."

"Past tense?"

"Mostly. Depends on how much of this—" She waved her hand over him. "Was caused by your own stupidity."

His face fell and Molly realized he was already blaming himself; he didn't need her to add to it.

"What happened, Sherlock?" she said quietly.

"I don't know."

"Now you're just plain lying to me."

"I can't tell you, Molly. I—"

She watched him search for an excuse she would find acceptable.

"I'm protecting someone."

"Who? John?"

He didn't answer.

Molly pressed her lips together. "I see. Well, there's something I want to know, and I want you to look me in the eye and tell me the truth." She waited for him to do so. "Are there any drugs in my flat?"

"No."

"Because if there are—if I ever find _any_ evidence you were getting high in my flat, I don't care if it's five days or five years from now, Sherlock—"

"You won't."

Molly hadn't worked with Sherlock all this time without learning a thing or two. "I won't find it or it's not there to be found?"

"There are no illegal drugs or drugs paraphernalia in your flat, Molly Hooper. At least not from me."

She glared at the added bit of sass (and the dig at Tom) but sat back. "Okay then."

Another long pause, still not their usual but less uncomfortable than when she first got here.

"May I have my button back?"

Molly sighed and held it out. "You're going to have to come off that eventually, you know."

"A problem for another day." Sherlock dosed himself, then closed his eyes and folded his hands together under his chin, the button completely hidden and secure between them. "Today has problems of its own."

"The case," Molly said sarcastically, still not convinced.

He remained silent, and Molly took her cue. This she knew all too well.

()()()()

"When you invited me to coffee when the boys were at hospital, this isn't quite what I had in mind," Molly said to Mary, setting down her tray at a table in the London's canteen.

"Nor I," Mary admitted, prying the lid off her coffee and adding cream. "Although with Sherlock, we probably shouldn't be surprised, eh?"

Molly grimaced her awareness of this and sat down.

"Are you just waking up?" Mary said, surveying Molly's plate of toast and fruit, with a fistful of various packets on the side.

"No, but toast and fruit is hard to ruin." She doctored her own coffee before taking a sip. "The Nutella is good, at least."

"Well, eat up. You're not going to want to hear my news on an empty stomach."

Molly froze, a plastic knife in one hand and a piece of bread in the other. "What is it? What's happened to Sherlock? Internal hemorrhage? Fever? Ileus?"

"No, no, nothing like that," Mary said, reaching across the table to squeeze Molly's arm. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."

Molly sighed and began spreading Nutella over her toast. "It's really hard being a pathologist sometimes. Your mind always jumps to the worst possible scenario."

"I'm sorry," Mary said again. "It's—well, here. The headlines say it all."

Molly read them as Mary pulled out a stack of tabloids from the empty chair beside her and laid them out one by one. _Seven Times a Night in Baker Street. He made me wear the hat. Shag-a-Lot Holmes._

"I don't—what?"

"You remember my maid of honor, Janine? Apparently she and Sherlock are engaged. Or at least they were until she ratted him out to the press."

Molly dropped both knife and toast. "What?"

Mary nodded. "Oh, yes. John came home and told me last week. She was at Sherlock's when he took him home. In his bedroom, and then his bath. John saw it with his own two eyes."

Molly had lost all capacity for speech. _No. Not Sherlock. He's not like that, he doesn't do relationships, he's not into women—Well, except for Not Her Face_ ….

"I mean, I knew they were chummy at the wedding," Mary continued, "but I never dreamed—"

"He went home alone."

Mary stopped and Molly flushed. That was rude, to imply someone hadn't had a good time, and besides, what reason did she have to notice?

"It's just—I saw Janine dancing with someone else, and…."

"I don't know who called whom after the fact, but they were definitely together as of last week."

Well, no wonder Molly's coworkers had given her strange looks today and broke off their conversations whenever she approached. Everyone knew she worked closely with Sherlock Holmes.

"What—" Molly stabbed a piece of fruit, more to occupy her hands than out of any desire to eat. "You said—you said she ratted him out. What happened?"

"Sherlock faked their relationship to get to her boss. Something about a case?"

"He faked an _engagement_ for a case?"

Mary shrugged and tapped one paper. "That's what she says. I've tried calling her to get the scoop myself, but her mobile goes straight to voicemail. Probably turned it off."

"Yes," Molly said faintly.

"He had a ring and everything," Mary said.

"I—"

 _This explains why he had that picture up. It was a picture of the two of them, of him and Janine together. And why he needed my flat, because he was— they were—_

"I—" Molly swallowed. "I'm not that hungry after all." She tried a smile. "I, um, I'll see you later, okay?"

And without even picking up her rubbish, Molly Hooper grabbed her cardigan and her handbag and made her escape. Mary watched her go, taking a long drink of coffee.

Whatever Sherlock knew about her, whatever he'd discovered about Magnussen, he hadn't shared it with Molly Hooper.

()()()()

Two days later, Molly was curled on her sofa with Toby and a bowl of popcorn, waiting for the next episode of _Poldark_ , when she heard a noise. Muting the telly, she tilted her head and listened. Definitely a noise, definitely coming from her bedroom. Which should be empty. She glanced at Toby, whose ears were perked. He heard it too.

Molly grabbed her mobile and punched in 999 but didn't hit send. Carefully shifting Toby off her lap and setting the popcorn aside, she crept towards the hall. Then her bedroom door swung open.

"William Sherlock Scott Holmes!"

He cringed at her use of his full name but Molly was livid.

"You scared me half to death! What are you doing here?"

"I need your help."

"I meant, what are you doing out of hospital?"

He winced and grabbed his right side, and Molly surrendered to the inevitable. Tossing her mobile back onto the sofa, where Toby stopped its bouncing with one quick paw, she stepped forward and helped Sherlock to a chair.

"Thank you," he said, breathing heavily. "I never knew you used your abdomen to walk up stairs."

"You use your abdomen for breathing and for staying upright, both of which are required to walk up stairs," Molly said. "What's going on?"

"I need your help."

"I'll call a taxi. We'll get you back to hospital."

"No, not that kind of help." He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. "I need you to obtain some items for me."

Molly accepted the list scribbled on brown kitchen paper in Sherlock's block script and scanned it. Nothing illegal, just an odd assortment of items that could each have been chosen in a game of "which of these items doesn't belong."

Typical Sherlock, in other words.

"All right," Molly said slowly. "But—"

"I can do without the hospital for a few hours," Sherlock said. "Make the arrangements at Baker Street, then bring the remaining items to the address at the bottom." He raised his right arm to point, then stopped the motion—and his breathing—abruptly.

"I do this, and then you go back to hospital," Molly said. "Tonight."

"Fine. I'll need more morphine by then, anyway."

Molly shot him a disapproving look, which he ignored.

"Don't tell anyone," he said. "Not John, not Lestrade, and most especially not Mycroft. Do you understand? Don't tell them you've seen me or anything about that." He nodded towards the list.

"Okay."

Sherlock used his arms to push himself into a standing position but didn't move to leave. After a prolonged silence which Molly made no attempt to fill, he spoke. "It's not true, you know."

There could only be one thing he was referring to. "Okay," she said automatically.

"Janine is buying a cottage in Sussex Downs with the proceeds from the interviews."

"How nice for her." Molly winced. That came out bitchier than she intended.

"We were never together. I lied to her to get access to Magnussen's office. She's his PA."

"Okay."

Sherlock studied her face, trying to read her reaction. "That's why I needed your flat, so—"

"So you could seduce a woman in yours."

But not in hers. Sherlock would never conduct a seduction here, fake or otherwise. He just didn't see Molly that way.

"Not … exactly. She just showed up. Whenever she pleased. And rearranged my things."

His nose wrinkled in distaste, and Molly felt a petty spurt of satisfaction. She, Molly, knew how Sherlock liked his things. She knew not to move back into her bedroom or take his things off its walls, even when he was in hospital.

She knew she was pathetic.

"I just thought you might have wondered about it," he said. "Since you haven't visited since the story made the papers."

"I had work, Sherlock." A lame excuse you didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to see through, but Molly could hardly say she'd been jealous of an apparently nonexistent relationship.

"I never intended on going through with it. It was all for the case."

Molly's fists clenched, wadding the kitchen paper in one hand. "That is not the justification you seem to think it is, Sherlock Holmes."

That stopped him for a moment, his expression one of genuine surprise. "It's the best justification I know."

"It's not good enough," she said bluntly. "It's not a good enough reason to get high, and it's definitely not a good enough reason to deceive a woman about your feelings for her."

Sherlock's head tilted, as if he sensed the meaning of the conversation had shifted but couldn't place how. "I thought you'd be pleased it was fake, considering your previous infatuation."

Molly gritted her teeth. The man's vanity knew no bounds. "Well, I'm not. And my 'previous infatuation' has nothing to do with it."

Sherlock frowned. "Why are you being so—" He waved his hands in frustration.

"So what?"

"So … like a girl?"

Molly rolled her eyes. Honesty, how could such a clever man be this stupid?

"I am a girl, Sherlock, not that you've ever noticed."

He continued to eye her suspiciously.

Molly held up the kitchen-paper list. "Do you want this stuff or not?"

His expression immediately smoothed, and he gave her one of his practiced smiles. "Yes. You'll do as I ask?"

"Yes, Sherlock. I'll do as you ask."

When did she not?

()()()()

Molly positioned the round table to the right of John's chair and set the bottle of perfume on top of it. Moving the chair from John's old bedroom to the sitting room by herself had taken some doing; in the end she'd managed by putting a rug underneath the chair legs and half pulling, half letting-it-fall down the stairs before waddling it into place in front of the fireplace. Had Sherlock attempted such a feat, he would have ripped open his sutures for sure. Molly stuffed the shop bag from her purchase of the perfume into her handbag and surveyed the room, making sure she had left everything as he instructed. Satisfied, she pulled out the list to read the remaining items she'd already memorized: _blue jump drive in my desk_ (currently in her handbag), _projector_ , and _wheelchair_. Well, she could get a wheelchair from Barts, and if she were careful, the projector too. Mike Stamford kept one in his office for presentations, and it just so happened Molly knew how to pick a lock.

She was doing just that when her mobile rang, and the sudden noise in the stillness of the hallway on top of her already tense nerves nearly made her scream; she did drop the pick. Fumbling in her bag, eager to hush the noise, Molly answered without checking the caller ID.

"Molly? It's Greg Lestrade."

 _Shit._

Molly turned, putting her back to the door and smiling as if Greg could see her. "Greg! Hello!"

"Are you working tonight?"

"Er—" What was the right answer to that question? Did he want her to be working? Did she want to want what he wanted, or did she want the opposite of what he wanted?

"It's just I need to talk to you about … something, and I'm kind of in the neighborhood. I thought I'd drop by Barts if you're there."

"Yeah, yes, okay! But—" Molly took a deep breath, knowing she sounded too chipper. "I'm kind of up to my elbows right now. I could meet you in, say, thirty minutes? In the canteen?"

"That would be great, Molly. Thanks."

"Okay, I'll see you then."

Molly ended the call, then turned the device off for good measure. The admin wing was deserted after hours, and no one had come to investigate. She gathered the pick from the floor and took another deep breath to steady her hands. She had twenty-nine minutes to break into her boss's office, steal an expensive piece of equipment, find a wheelchair, stash the contraband in her own office, grab her lab coat, and be relaxing with a cup of coffee in the canteen.

()()()()

Having asked the cabbie to wait for her, Molly was wrestling the wheelchair out of the backseat when it was lifted from her hands. She spun round.

"You're the junkie."

The scruffy young man frowned but didn't argue. "Did you get it all?"

"Where's Sherlock?"

"Around."

"Right. Well, do _not_ let him use that IV, do you hear me?" She had found an empty wheelchair, complete with disconnected IV line, sitting in the hall outside radiology and wheeled it away as fast as her short legs would carry her. "I don't know what's in it, and more importantly, I don't know anything about who it was last in. Sherlock is not to touch it—no, just give it to me." Molly reached to take the bag of saline off the IV pole at the back of the wheelchair, but it was pulled out of her reach.

"He says we're keeping the IV."

Molly gaped, then looked up and down the deserted street. The young man—Bill, that was it, Bill Wiggins—Bill stared back at her without explanation.

"Fine," Molly huffed, turning back to the car to lift the projector from the floor and set it in the seat of the chair. "But if Sherlock contracts some bloodborne disease, I'm holding you responsible."

"Don't worry, miss. I'll take care of him."

Molly fished the jump drive from the bottom of her handbag and slapped it in Bill's hand. "And see he gets back to hospital tonight. He promised me."

"There's a plan for that, miss."

"Right. Okay. Well, I think that's everything."

"Yes, miss." Bill made no move to wheel the items—anywhere. "Goodnight."

Molly sighed, then got back into the taxi, wondering if she would ever find out the common denominator between a wheelchair, a projector, a jump drive, John's chair, and a bottle of Claire de la Lune perfume.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: So, y'all like Sundays, huh? Duly noted ;)

* * *

Sherlock was readmitted to hospital later that night and rushed to theatre to stop the internal bleeding (resection this time, the bloody prat). After reestablishing their familiar "Sherlock makes a strange request and Molly complies" dynamic, some of the tension between them eased and Molly visited often. John said she was the one visitor Sherlock always stayed awake for. Molly said she was the one visitor Sherlock couldn't nauseate.

It was a painfully long hospital stay despite Mycroft bribing the nursing staff with catering on every shift and John convincing the surgeon to discharge Sherlock into his care a few days early. Molly felt visiting at hospital and visiting at home were two different things, especially for someone as private as Sherlock, so she had gone back to her usual routine and had not seen Sherlock since he came home three days ago. Then John texted her earlier today.

SHERLOCK'S MANAGED TO ASK TO SEE YOU WITHOUT MENTIONING YOUR NAME FOUR TIMES TODAY. ANY CHANCE YOU'RE FREE AFTER WORK?

Molly had replied that she was and put her phone back in the pocket of her lab coat. John was lovely, including her in Sherlock's recovery as a way to make up for his gaffe of forgetting to tell her about the shooting, but she knew better than to take his comments seriously. If Sherlock wanted to see her, it was only because he found her stories of dead patients more interesting than John's stories of live ones.

When Molly arrived at 221B, Sherlock was ensconced on the sofa with what looked to be a handmade blanket while a man with gray hair and the same mouth as Sherlock's sat in his chair. Molly had not met Sherlock's parents while he was in hospital, but she should have expected they would help him settle in at home. Not wanting to draw attention to herself or interrupt the family, she turned to sneak back downstairs, but Sherlock had already noticed her.

"Don't hover in the doorway, Molly. You're not a ghost."

She glanced at him, but his eyes were still closed. _For all you see me, I may as well be._

"Hello?" she said, stepping through the open door.

"Come on in!" John yelled from the kitchen.

"Who's that?"

Molly found herself looking into familiar blue-green eyes as an attractive older woman stuck her head round the glass partition.

"Oh, hello!"

Molly smiled and extended her right hand. "You must be Sherlock's mum. I'm Molly Hooper, his pathologist." Then, as his mother did a double take, "I mean, _a_ pathologist. I'm a pathologist, not Sherlock's personal one, obviously."

"Yes, she is," Sherlock said.

"That would be silly," Molly said, wiping her suddenly damp palms on her trousers. "No one has a specific pathologist assigned to them unless they're dead, and you're—" She broke off, realizing Sherlock's near-death experiences would not be a pleasant topic for his mother. "Not dead," she finished lamely.

"Well, it's delightful to meet you, dear," Mrs. Holmes said, reaching down to take Molly's hand in both of hers. "We've heard so much about you."

Molly shot an incredulous look at Sherlock, who was still lying on the sofa with his eyes closed. "You—you have?"

"Oh, yes," said Mr. Holmes, who had risen to greet her. "John says you've been quite kind to our Sherlock. Even Myc says you're cleverer than most."

Molly was astonished that Mycroft Holmes remembered her name, much less spoke of her to anyone else.

"When I was dead, you were my pathologist," Sherlock pointed out.

"That's different—"

"Sherlock!"

"Please, son," Mr. Holmes said. "No more talk of death or dying. You're recovering now."

"No thanks to any of you," Sherlock muttered, attempting to roll over and face the wall, only to fall back with a groan. "I need morphine!"

"No, you need to stop putting pressure on your wound," John said calmly, carrying a tray into the sitting room and setting it on the desk, which was as messy as ever despite Sherlock's lack of work. "Tea, Molly?"

"Oh, no, I can't stay. I just stopped by to check on Sherlock."

"Oh, please do," Mrs. Holmes said. "It would be lovely to speak with one of Sherlock's friends."

She seemed sincere, but Molly did not need to look at Sherlock to feel the daggers he was staring into her back. "That's very kind, but I have to get home to feed Toby. My cat."

"Another time, then." Mrs. Holmes smiled.

Molly returned it. "I'd like that. Bye, Sherlock."

He was back to ignoring her, now frowning at John. "Do I get offered any tea?" he asked as John passed a cup to Sherlock's mother.

"You don't want tea."

"You could still ask. It's polite, isn't it?"

"What would be polite is to say goodbye to Molly." John added milk to Mr. Holmes's cup and handed it over.

"Goodbye, Molly. Thank you for leaving."

"Sherlock Holmes!" His mother's voice was stern enough to startle Molly but had no outward effect on her son.

"It's all right. I understand," Molly said, and she did. Sherlock was overwhelmed with attention at the moment and sincerely appreciated her recognition of the fact. "It was nice to meet you," she said to his parents, and left.

()()()()

Sherlock took a deep breath to yell for Mrs. Hudson, but it was arrested involuntarily as his diaphragm pushed down on his wound. _Damn, he kept forgetting about that_. After a moment of recovery, he grabbed a nearby book and banged its spine on the floor repeatedly, then amused himself tapping out the letters of Mrs. Hudson's full name in Morse code. He'd got to the second "S" in Sissons before she appeared. Sherlock scowled at the dust cloth in her hand; she was certain to put it to work while she was here.

"Yes, Sherlock, dear, what is it?"

"Bored."

"You can't threaten me, young man."

He looked up in mild surprise to find the dust cloth waving in his direction, causing a flurry of particles to drift towards the floor.

"There are hundreds of books in here. Surely you can find something to read?"

"I've already read them. That's why they're here, because I bought them and then read them."

"Shall I turn the telly on for you?"

"Where's Molly?" Molly wasn't boring. Unlike everyone else, she did not try to foist tea and toast on him at every turn and was not put off by talk of death, his or otherwise.

Mrs. Hudson looked surprised. "Well, I assume she's at work, dear."

He frowned. "What day is it?"

"Thursday."

"Whatever happened to Wednesday!" Molly was off on Wednesday of this week but hadn't come to see him. She'd been more dependable when he was in hospital. He crossed his arms, settling in for a good sulk.

"It passed, Sherlock." Mrs. Hudson crossed to his desk and began dusting the free space, which wasn't much.

"I didn't notice."

"Well, that's good, isn't it? Time passing?"

"It's not passing _now_."

She moved on to the coffee table, lifting books and his violin case, carrying this morning's tea tray into the kitchen. "John will be home soon enough, and you'll feel better then."

"I want to feel better now." Sherlock sunk lower on the sofa, bending his knees to allow room for his body. His abdomen didn't like to be folded in half right now.

"I know, dear, but healing takes time."

"I don't have time! I have things to do!"

"Well, you should have thought about that before you went and got yourself shot!"

"Go away."

"You're the one who called me up here," Mrs. Hudson protested.

"Yes, and now I'm telling you to go away." Sherlock made a dismissing wave.

She left, closing the door rather firmly behind her.

 _John will be home soon_ ….

John. He had moved out of the terrace in the suburbs back into Baker Street and other than necessary communication about Mary's pregnancy, the couple wasn't speaking to each other. John was sullen and short-tempered, and though Sherlock did not understand why his friend was continuing to alienate his wife when it obviously made him miserable, he was sorry John was sad.

But not sorry he was back at Baker Street, and not sorry John's availability meant Sherlock wasn't being smothered by his mother and Mycroft. At the thought of his brother, Sherlock brightened. Two o'clock in the afternoon on a weekday; Mycroft was certain to be busy with something or another. _Perfect_.

Sherlock pulled out his phone.

()()()()

The following week, Molly knocked briskly on the door of 221 Baker Street. She had taken the long way here, avoiding walking past Regent's Park where she and Tom had spent so many summer evenings last year. She tried the handle, but it was locked. She stepped back to wait, knowing it would take Sherlock a while to make his way down the stairs. But it was John who opened the door a moment later.

"John! I thought you'd be with Mary."

Mary had a routine antenatal appointment today and Mrs. Hudson had plans, leaving Sherlock with no one to monitor him. Molly was here to fill in on her day off.

"I'm going to meet her there," John said. "Thanks again for doing this, Molly. Mrs. Hudson has her weekly poker game, and I didn't want to ask her to miss it."

"It's no problem," she said, stepping inside. "I'm sure she's already helping you a lot and I don't mind."

"Wait just a minute before you go up."

She turned to face him.

"Today's meds," John said, holding up a baggie containing three pills. "Oxycodone every four hours. His next dose isn't until sixteen hundred—no sooner," he said sternly. "Put them somewhere Sherlock won't expect."

Molly took the bag, folded it, and slipped it down the front of her shirt.

"He might deduce they're there, but he won't be brave enough to reach for them," she said, grinning.

John laughed. "He's going to try to convince you I forgot his morphine this morning, or that it's every eight hours instead of every twelve. Don't fall for that, either."

"I won't," Molly said. "I assume you're keeping the drugs in a lockbox?"

"Yes, and I'm the only person who knows the combination. No offense," he added.

"None taken. What I don't know, he can't charm out of me."

"Exactly. Although he's not been very charming recently."

"Just don't get hit by a bus," Molly said. "He'd really be in trouble then."

"Er, right. I shouldn't be too long, but I didn't want to leave him alone just yet. You know how he is when he's bored…."

"It's no problem," Molly repeated. "Take your time. We'll be fine." Another hearty smile, just like the one she used to give nervous new mums when babysitting. "You've got your mobile?"

John checked his pocket. "Yes. Text me if you need anything. Even if he's just being overly obnoxious."

"Oh, I brought some things from the lab. We'll be fine."

He hesitated. "I don't think Sherlock's up for any experiments."

"Don't worry," Molly called from halfway up the stairs. "Bye, John!"

Both doors into the flat were closed. Molly glanced up the stairs towards John's old room. She knew he had adjusted his hours at the surgery since Sherlock's injury, but it had almost sounded as if John were staying here. She frowned. That couldn't be right. John and Mary were newlyweds with a baby on the way, and Sherlock wasn't so sick that he needed someone in the flat with him constantly, despite John's concern. Molly shook the question off as none of her business and knocked on the sitting room door with one hand as she opened it with the other.

"It's me."

"I was shot in the abdomen, not the eye, Molly."

He lay stretched out on the sofa, propped up by two bed pillows with his laptop standing on its side on the floor beside him.

"I know. Sorry." She bit her lip at the automatic apology. Sherlock hated when she did that. "How are you feeling?"

"Tired of everyone asking me that question," he said sharply. "Do you have the drugs?"

"What drugs?"

She tried for innocent, but Sherlock wasn't buying it. He narrowed his eyes.

"John wouldn't have told you the combination … he's seen me persuade you too many times before, and he'd expect you to feel sorry for me in my current state, making you easy to manipulate."

Molly crossed her arms and looked round for a place to sit. Normally Sherlock was in his chair when she visited and she could take the sofa or they worked together in the kitchen. A month ago she'd have lifted his legs out of the way herself (she'd done it plenty of times when he hogged her own sofa), but a month ago things were different.

"But he'll be gone for at least two hours, and it's already time for my next dose."

"No, it's not. Not for over an hour."

He flashed a triumphant smile. "So, you do have them."

Molly sighed. She'd walked straight into that.

He looked her up and down. "Not in your pockets … you know I'm an expert pickpocket."

Molly chose a chair at the desk, sat down facing him, and waited for the inevitable conclusion.

"Not your handbag, either—too obvious to carry it with you around the flat, and it has the same problem with pickpocketing. You might have stashed them downstairs somewh—" He broke off, staring at her chest.

"If you can get them, you can have them." Molly gave a smug smile of her own, which only widened when Sherlock jerked his eyes up to her face, then quickly looked away.

They sat not looking at each other for a few moments before she tried again.

"How are you, really?"

"I'm okay."

"That's good."

The silence stretched, and Molly gripped the sides of the chair with her hands. This was more awkward than she had expected.

"I, um—I haven't bothered your stuff. It's all still there, just like you left it."

"You can take it down. In fact, bring it with you the next time you come over. I can work from here now."

Now that he wasn't "entertaining" Janine. Still, he'd invited Molly to visit again. She let go of her chair.

"I will."

Sherlock didn't say anything else, and Molly realized if they were going to have anything to talk about, she'd have to make the conversation. Which was why she'd brought visual aids.

"I brought you something from the lab," she said, unzipping her bag.

"You did? What is it?" He sat up, rolling carefully to one side and pushing himself up with his elbow.

She rattled the box of slides. Sherlock didn't hide his disappointment.

"Do you have anything better to do?" she said pointedly. "Where's your microscope?" She glanced into the kitchen, but the table was clear except for a basket of fruit and a stack of takeaway serviettes with squared corners.

Maybe John was living here.

"Try the grill."

"The— Never mind."

Molly found the microscope neatly packed in its box in the grill drawer. She spread out the pieces on the kitchen table, left the directions in the box, and began putting them together. It had been years since she'd had to assemble a microscope, and she enjoyed the puzzle. Sherlock made his way into the kitchen, taking a slide from the box at random and holding it up to the light.

"What are they?"

"My teaching slides," Molly said, tightening the thumbscrew to secure the microscope head in place. "I've been working on my personal collection since my first foundation year."

"I'm not a pathologist. Or even a physician. Chemist, not biologist, remember?"

"You're a scientist, aren't you?" Molly looked up over one eyepiece to ensure he caught her challenge.

Sherlock pulled out a chair.


	7. Chapter 7

Molly was a good teacher.

She had obviously modified her collection for Sherlock, limiting the slides to a single tissue type (in this case, skeletal muscle) and arranging them from variations of normal to progressively worsening disease so his new-found skills could keep up with the advancing complexity. She reviewed the chemistry of slide preparation with him in detail and even had examples of the same sample prepared in different ways so he could compare the techniques. Despite her advanced knowledge as a histopathologist, she explained the basic structure of the cells and process of evaluation without sounding impatient or making him feel like a simpleton, and when Sherlock pointed out features he already knew, she advanced her instruction accordingly. The end result was a lesson that was interesting and challenging without being frustrating. She had even noted the details of each case in a notebook, transforming the samples from disembodied slides to real people.

In short, Molly Hooper was the best lab partner ever.

Not that this was news to Sherlock, but he was … pleased … at this indication he would be able to continue working with Molly without worrying about being slapped in the face. Molly had visited him often in hospital, but Sherlock had attributed that to merely wanting to reassure herself he was alive. He hadn't known what to expect when John said Molly would be keeping him company during Mary's antenatal visit, and it wasn't until she pulled out the box of slides that Sherlock began to hope— _think_ , he corrected himself, he began to _think_ —maybe she still wanted to be friends.

Molly's violence the day of his drugs test had been completely out of character, and her behavior since he'd been shot was more reminiscent of groupie!Molly before his fall than the easy friendship they'd established since his return. Now Molly hid pathology slides in her handbag and drugs in her bra. He had to admire her cleverness even as he bemoaned its effectiveness; she had known he would deduce her hiding spot no matter where it was and had chosen a location he quite literally wouldn't touch. Short of body-packing, a dangerous and unreliable method at best, it was the most secure location. Even if Sherlock considered it rather risqué for his pathologist.

At least he wasn't bored.

He shifted the slide to examine another section of myositis. Ever since he'd invited her to solve cases with him last autumn, he and Molly had been working together better than ever, both in the lab and out. All right, there was that time she'd talked about all the sex she and Tom were having (as if he couldn't deduce that from her cheerier-than-usual demeanor and the naturally heightened color in her complexion), and he had given into temptation once—but only once!—and cut off a section of kidney sent down from theatre while she was still in autopsy, but mostly they had developed a comfortable, natural relationship impeded neither by his blunt honesty nor her clumsy infatuation. Sherlock still preferred working cases in the field with John (if nothing else, he never had to worry about John being able to handle himself if something went wrong), but Molly wasn't a bad second. There were even some situations where her presence as a woman was better than John's—less conspicuous, easier to explain.

 _Oh, so you do notice Molly is a woman._

Sherlock ignored this obvious fact presented in John's voice and adjusted the microscope's focus.

 _Seriously, though, considering someone else's safety—that's good_. _A definite sign of maturity._

 _Of course I consider Molly's safety. She's even shorter than you._

Mind John shut up and Sherlock leaned back. "There's something wrong with the myofibers."

Molly nodded, ponytail swishing across her back. "The peripheral aspect of the fascicles are degenerated. Try this one."

Sherlock fitted the slide into the clips and bent to examine it. Molly stood over his shoulder, not saying anything, but he could feel the anticipation radiating off her unnaturally stiff posture. There was something about this slide, something she wanted him to notice…. After a moment, he held out one hand.

"Give me that slide back, the one we just did."

He felt the cool touch of glass in his palm and raised his head to exchange the slides on the stage. After a moment's study, he swapped them out once more, examining the new one again, moving the slide to view the entire specimen, and that's when it sank in—he was looking at a purplish field rather than the dark red that had characterized the previous one.

"They're from the same sample. This one—" He tapped the original slide—"was prepped with hematoxylin and eosin stain."

"Yes, exactly."

Molly beamed at him like she always did when he said something brilliant, and Sherlock felt something inside click into place. This was familiar, this was predictable. _He hadn't ruined everything_.

"I miss my microscope in the lab." He stood and walked round the table, gathering the scattered slides and slotting them back into the box.

"It will still be there when you get back," Molly said, taking the box and slides from his hands and consulting her handwritten index to order them correctly.

"I can come back?" The question escaped without his permission, evidence of how it had lingered in the back of his mind over the passing weeks.

Molly looked up. "As long as you're clean."

Sherlock flashed her a smile, the one that normally got him whatever he wanted from Molly, including the use of her bedroom.

Mind John wiggled his eyebrows.

 _No, not like that, you know it's not—_ Sherlock slammed a door in Mind John's face and returned his attention to the real person in front of him.

"As long as you don't count nicotine," he said.

Molly's eyes dropped to his forearm. Sherlock twisted his arm so the sleeve of his dressing gown covered it. The track marks had healed, but he didn't want to see Molly looking for them.

"I won't count it as long as you're not overdosing," she said.

"Done." He'd long ago calculated the toxic dose for his weight and metabolism.

Molly's fingers slowed, her gaze lowered as she took an unnecessarily long time to replace a slide.

"Speaking of overdoses … we need to talk about that speedball."

"You need to do your research," Sherlock snapped, walking away from her. "There was no speedball."

She caught the back of his trousers, halting him rather painfully. He glared down at her despite the fact he hadn't been able to send Molly Hooper scurrying out of the room in ages.

This newly-grown backbone of hers was damned inconvenient.

"Cocaine and morphine? Seriously, Sherlock?"

He set his jaw, staring over her head, intent on tolerating her lecture so they could move on.

"Was that a suicide attempt?"

"No."

"Because it's a damn good way to die," Molly said matter-of-factly. "Fast, efficient, painless. The kind of thing a graduate chemist would never do … unless he didn't care if he lived or died."

Sherlock said nothing.

"Do you know how many ODs have come through the mortuary this year already, Sherlock? Do you have any idea what it would do to me to see you on that slab because of something as stupid, as banal, as drugs? Do you even care?" Her voice cracked. "It was bad enough when I knew it wasn't real."

Sherlock flicked his gaze down to see she had pools of tears in both eyes. He felt a pain in his chest not unlike being shot. Ruthlessly, he shoved it down and gave Molly the same rationalization he'd given himself when he'd been offered the morphine.

"I was the other side of town. I wouldn't have been brought into Barts."

"You insufferable _arse_!" Molly's hand cracked across his cheek again.

He gasped as his head was forced to the side by the strength of her blow. He must have been higher than he thought the last time. That bloody _hurt_!

Molly rushed through the flat, grabbing her handbag and flinging slides and notes in willy-nilly. "I can't believe you," she said, giving her bag a brutal shake when the box of slides didn't fit the first time. "I can't believe you thought I wouldn't care you were dead as long as I didn't have to handle your body!"

"Molly, I'm sorry—" He didn't need the stinging in his cheek or the tears of his pathologist to regret his words. Especially after how well today had gone. Once they started working, at least.

"I don't care!"

A high-pitched whine began to sound in his ears, and Sherlock trailed her around the flat. "No, Molly, wait—"

"Don't you 'Molly' me, Sherlock Holmes. After everything I went through to keep you alive, after everything _John_ went through when he thought you were dead, you go and pull a stunt like that!" She slung her handbag over her shoulder and made for the open doorway.

Sherlock tried to block her path but couldn't move fast enough. Pressing one hand to his wound and hunching over to minimize the pain, he blurted the first excuse that came to mind.

"You can't leave. You promised John you'd stay until he came back."

Molly appeared to be deeply regretting both her promise and Sherlock's reminder, but since she stopped just this side of the door, Sherlock considered it a success.

"Mol—" He swallowed. "Listen to me. It was oral morphine. I'm not stupid."

"You're doing a damn good imitation of it!"

"Oral morphine and intranasal cocaine. That time."

"You did it more than _once?!"_

"No! No, I just meant the rest of the time I took them IV. But not together." He shrugged. "I like taking risks, and that was a calculated one. I adjusted the dosage to compensate."

Molly reached out and slammed the door closed. "You did complex biochemistry while high. Calculations your life depended on when there was no way you could have been certain of the purity of the drugs or the effect of any fillers. That's the very definition of stupid, Sherlock."

He spread his hands. "I was right, wasn't I?"

She wasn't beaming at his brilliance now. She was shaking, refusing to look at him, and Sherlock's heart thudded in his ears, along with that high-pitched whine. She hadn't—she hadn't written him off after finding out about the drugs, but what if he hadn't been shot? They had only been back to a tentative normal for a matter of hours, and that largely because of Molly's foresight in bringing something to occupy his mind. What if he really had ruined everything between them not by getting high, but with his smart mouth and determination to behave like a high-functioning sociopath?

"Sherlock…." She turned round. "Please tell me … please, please tell me you know there are people who care a great deal about you and would be very sorry—very _grieved_ to learn you were dead, however it came about. Please—"

"Don't betray the love of my friends?"

Molly's posture eased when he repeated her previous words, and the whining noise dulled. For once, he had said the right thing at the right time.

"I am sorry, Molly Hooper. For…."

John said genuine apologies contained a noun, a verb, and a descriptive phrase. Sherlock rewound the last few minutes in his mind, trying to figure out where Molly would consider he went wrong.

"For implying you wouldn't care if I were dead."

"I would care," she whispered. "Very much."

She was looking at him now, those big brown eyes still shiny with recent tears and exerting a power he didn't understand. They made him want … things.

"If I—" He cleared his throat to remove the huskiness from his voice and tried again. "If I repack your bag for you, properly, will you stay?"

Molly considered him a moment, her eyes never leaving his, holding him there, waiting.

"Yes, Sherlock." She pulled her bag off her shoulder and extended it to him in both hands like a peace offering. "I'll stay."

()()()()

Molly let her head fall back against the wall of the Tube car ( _they're cars, not carriages_ ) and closed her eyes, utterly exhausted. She had expected the afternoon with Sherlock to be tiring, but not this soul-deep weariness, not a return of the fear and anxiety and sheer misery she had carried around with her during his absence.

Bloody hell, the man had considered the risk and done it anyway! The thought terrified Molly, though she couldn't tell if it was more that he had been so desperate to not be bored or that he had been that desperate and she hadn't known. He had practically been living with her at the time; had she been so wrapped up in her guilt and sense of failure after breaking up with Tom that she hadn't seen Sherlock for who he was?

Molly pondered this idea for the time it took the doors to whisk open, trade passengers, and close again. No, she knew Sherlock. She knew he was an adrenaline junkie, knew he was careless with his own life—for god's sake, she had helped the man jump off a six-story building! He had stood in her flat nearly three weeks ago and claimed doing something for a case was the best justification he knew and Molly believed him. Or at least, she believed that he believed it. For whatever reason, Sherlock thought he could get the upper hand with Magnussen by destroying his own reputation, first as an addict and then through the scandal with Janine. Molly didn't think he had planned that part (she doubted he'd spared a thought for Janine's reaction to the inevitable discovery that her engagement was fake), but Sherlock was nothing if not an opportunist.

Molly sighed, sitting up to see where they were and rubbing her left shoulder, which ached whenever she spent too much time hunched over her work. Well, at least that horrible confrontation was over now.

If only her feelings could be packed away as neatly as Sherlock had packed her bag.


	8. Chapter 8

The following Monday, Molly found the outer door to Sherlock's flat unlocked and climbed the stairs, knocking on the open jamb.

"Molly!" Sherlock set his laptop aside and struggled to get to his feet.

She missed his usual effortless grace but knew he wouldn't appreciate her help, so she waited as he sat on the edge of the sofa for a moment before pushing himself upright.

"I brought your case files." She lifted the flap of her satchel and pulled out the folders. "I tried to keep them in order, but…."

"It's fine. I know where everything was."

She nodded. Of course he did.

"Would you like to have dinner?"

Molly raised one eyebrow. The last time she thought Sherlock was asking her to dinner, he'd had a day of cases in mind. Although that probably wasn't the situation this time … which only made it more confusing.

He tossed the file on his desk and gave a casual shrug. "I thought you might be hungry. Since you just got off work."

The only thing waiting for her at her flat was three-day-old pasta and a wilting head of lettuce. And Toby.

"Well…."

"We can get something from Speedy's, and you'll still be home in time to feed Toby. A few more minutes won't matter. You were going to stop for takeaway, anyway."

Molly no longer bothered to ask how Sherlock knew these things. She had learned he often couldn't explain his deductions about her, calling them "obvious."

"All right. What would you like?"

"Anything's fine," he called over his shoulder, halfway down the hall.

Molly heaved her overstuffed satchel onto one corner of the sofa (she was carrying her notes and copies of the journal articles for her research paper with her so she could work on them in spare moments), rubbing the top of her shoulder as she did so. The Tube had been absolutely stifling, and without the cushion of her jumper, the bag's webbed strap dug into her skin through the thin cotton of her flowered blouse.

"Why don't you come downstairs and eat with me?" Molly said as Sherlock came back into the room, money clip in hand. "Get out of the flat for a while?"

He paused in the act of passing her a couple of bank notes.

"Come on, you can deduce the other diners," she coaxed. "It'll be fun."

He looked down at his pajamas and back at her.

"It's just Speedy's," she said, knowing he would refuse to get dressed, anyway. "But you do need shoes."

He scowled.

"Health and Safety's rules, not mine."

He extended the money to her again, but Molly shook her head.

"Consider it payback for the food I've eaten at your flat," he said, keeping his arm outstretched.

"Like you actually eat anything. Get your shoes."

Sherlock grabbed her hand and pressed the notes into it, folding her fingers around them. "It's Mycroft's, anyway," he said, heading back to his bedroom.

Molly doubted that but fished her purse from her bag and added the cash to it. Leaving the rest of her things behind, she met Sherlock on the landing and closed the door. Remembering the difficulty he'd had coming up her fire escape the night he absconded from hospital, she watched him closely. He took the stairs one at a time, leading with his left foot. But his balance was good and he didn't seem short of breath, so Molly pretended there was nothing unusual about a grown man descending stairs like a toddler and they stepped outside.

Sherlock groaned, putting a hand up to shield his eyes. Molly tugged on his arm.

"Sunshine, Sherlock. Fresh air. It's good for you."

"It's London. There's no such thing as fresh air."

"Well, how about air con, then? Recycled air blown over refrigerant and cooled to a lovely twenty-two degrees." She opened the café door, enjoying the draft that raised goosebumps on her arms.

Sherlock preceded her inside and made a beeline for a table by the wall, leaving Molly to order their food. She carried it to the table and spilled the change beside his plate.

"Why won't you let me do anything nice for you?" he said.

She looked up from arranging her serviette on her lap. "What?"

He pushed the money towards her, hard enough for the coins to clang as they hit her plate and glass. "You're always doing things for me. Why won't you let me do anything nice for you?"

Her mouth fell open, and she sputtered for a moment. "I—I'm sorry, Sherlock. I was just giving you the change. I didn't mean to offend you."

"I'm not offended," he muttered, putting both elbows on the table and hunching over his bowl of soup.

Molly picked up the notes and coins, returning them to her wallet. "Thank you for buying me dinner."

"You're welcome," he muttered.

"But you don't have to bribe me."

He looked up, eyes wary. Normally they let any arguments or hurt feelings lie and didn't mention them again. Molly knew she was breaking the rules, but this was important.

"In case you're trying to make up for our argument last time. Or the drugs. You don't have to do that."

His brow creased, right above his nose. "Isn't that part of the give and take of normal relationships?"

"Our relationship is anything but normal, Sherlock."

His face relaxed into a smile and she returned it. Sherlock's phone beeped, and he set down his spoon and reached into his pocket to retrieve it.

"John's running late."

Molly stopped with a bite of salad halfway to her mouth. "John? Were you supposed to meet him for dinner?"

"What? No. He's late coming home."

She set down her fork. "So, he is living at Baker Street."

"Obviously."

"No, Sherlock, it is not 'obvious' why a newly-wedded man and expectant father is not living with his wife, the mother of his child. What on earth is going on?"

"They had a fight?"

"That's not a fight, that's a break-up." She stabbed a tomato and chewed without looking away from him, silently demanding an answer. She and Mary weren't that close, but Molly thought she would know about an impending divorce. A snarky tweet, a missing wedding ring, something.

He sighed, then picked up his spoon and resumed eating. "Mary has a secret and John found out. He's angry—to be honest, I'm not sure if he's angry because she didn't tell him or angry about the secret itself. Mary thinks she did the right thing in hiding it from him, so she's not exactly apologetic. Things are … tense."

"You know what it is, don't you?"

He gave her a flat stare.

"It's okay, I won't ask." But it explained why he'd asked her to retrieve John's chair.

"I think … Mary could use a friend," Sherlock said hesitantly.

"Like John has?"

It was faint, but there was a little more color across those glorious cheekbones.

"Like you, Molly Hooper."

()()()()

Mary Watson sat on one of the benches in the Barts courtyard, watching a sparrow waddle through a flowerbed looking for insects. Such a simple life: searching for food, avoiding predators, building shelter. Her life had been simple like that once, living day by day with no thought for anyone else, her only goal to stay alive and accomplish the mission. She hadn't known it then; she had thought she was giving up all that for the simple life five years ago when she left the business, changed her name, and became an ordinary citizen. But _that_ had been the simple life, back when she loved no one and was loved by no one in return. Now she was living both lives at once, blackmailed by one of the most dangerous men she'd ever met and carrying the baby of the man she loved, and it was anything but simple.

"Mary?"

She started, looking up into the July sunshine and recognizing the outline of Molly Hooper. Mary forced a smile.

"Hello, Molly."

"What are you doing here?"

That was a very good question, a better question than Molly could know. Mary certainly wasn't stalking her husband, wasn't lingering like a lovestruck teenager in a place he visited often, wasn't hoping—

"Nothing."

Molly sat on the other end of the bench, setting her striped satchel between them. "John's not here," she said kindly.

"I wasn't—yes, I was," Mary admitted with a sigh. "I thought I might see him. Pathetic, eh?"

"I don't think wanting to see your husband is pathetic."

"It is if he doesn't want to see you," Mary said bitterly.

"I'm just getting off. How about I buy you a cup of coffee? Or whatever you're drinking nowadays." She smiled at Mary's expanding stomach.

"Oh, no, I—" She'd said too much already. Molly didn't know why she and John were estranged, couldn't know that she, Mary, was the one who had shot Molly's beloved Sherlock.

But Molly's face fell at her rejection of the offer, and Mary realized she was trying to be friendly, not nosy. Even after five years, friendship still felt foreign to Mary; she was used to seeing other women as competition, a mark, or the enemy. Hadn't she befriended Janine to keep tabs on Magnussen? But Molly was friends with Sherlock, which meant she had experience with unconventional relationships. Even the placement of Molly's bag between them confirmed she picked up on Mary's need for personal space.

"That's all right," Molly said, standing up and hitching said bag over her shoulder. "You don't have to."

"Make it a real coffee and you're on."

Molly smiled.

()()()()

Fifteen minutes later the women were settled in a corner booth of a nearby café. Mary had had no trouble manipulating Molly into taking the seat that faced the wall. For all her awkwardness, Molly was actually very good at reading people.

Maybe this hadn't been such a good idea after all.

"So. What has Sherlock told you?"

Molly looked surprised at the direct question but answered readily enough.

"Just that John's angry because you kept a secret from him and you think you were right to do so."

Something about the simplicity of that answer, the truth even in its incompleteness, made Mary just a bit more confident in Sherlock's ability to resolve the situation with Magnussen.

"True enough, as far as it goes."

"Is there anything I can do?" Molly said.

"If I knew of something, I'd do it myself," Mary said. "I think I just have to give him time."

Molly nodded as if Mary had said something wise, not spouted the most unhelpful platitude ever.

"Well, then, tell me about the baby," Molly said brightly. "How are you feeling?"

"Good," Mary said with a smile, stroking one hand over the curve of her abdomen. "We have our second scan next week."

"Oh, are you going to find out the sex?" Molly asked, licking foam from her upper lip.

"Yeah, I think so. John insists he doesn't care, but I'm not that great with surprises," Mary said. _Spasibo, Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedi_. "And I was hoping—during our first scan—" She took a deep breath, steadying her unpredictable emotions. "I was hoping, when he saw the baby, that maybe…."

There had been a moment, when the screen came into focus and the baby's heartbeat whooshed into the room, that Mary thought everything was going to be okay. John watched the ultrasound monitor, but Mary watched John. She saw the wonder spread across his face, the smile that lit up his eyes, and when he looked at her, she beamed back at him. For one glorious moment they were simply two people in love sharing the evidence of their love, but then it all crumbled and John's expression went cold as he turned away from her. Now it was more than a month later, and despite the excitement of seeing her baby, Mary dreaded the appointment, dreaded seeing that cold mask on John's face again. She felt the tears coming before she could stop them.

"I'm sorry," she wailed, grabbing for a serviette and wiping her eyes. "I'm not a crier, really I'm not. It's these damn hormones."

Molly gave her a sympathetic smile and pushed another serviette across the table. "Like PMS on steroids, eh?"

Mary groaned. "You have no idea. And it doesn't help that all the blogs and magazines and books just rave about how good the sex is in the second trimester, and here I am home alone every night." She dug in her handbag for a real tissue, sniffling against a persistent drip from her right nostril. "The last time I had sex, I puked for two hours. It was horrible."

Molly burst out laughing.

"It wasn't funny," Mary said darkly, pausing to blow her nose. "Something about the hormone rush and the time of day, or maybe on an empty stomach … I don't know."

"I'm sure it wasn't," Molly said, still chuckling. "But I keep picturing John's face…."

So did Mary. Every day, all the time, a hundred little reminders.

She stuffed the tissue and serviettes in what remained of her coffee (even a small iced mocha had to be nearing her caffeine limit for the day) and changed the subject.

"Enough about me. What's new with you? I was sorry to hear about Tom."

Molly toyed with the handle of her cup. "Thanks."

Mary debated how much to pry, then reminded herself Molly was friends with Sherlock. She had to be used to personal questions that crossed polite boundaries.

"You were the one who broke it off?"

"I was. I should have done it months earlier, but … I got caught up in the excitement, I guess. Weirdly enough, having Sherlock around afterwards helped. Not much chance to feel sorry for yourself when there's a six-foot toddler invading your flat." But she smiled, showing an easy affection.

"I know you help Sherlock in the lab sometimes, but that's really all I know," Mary admitted. "What do you do?"

"I'm a specialist registrar in pathology."

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

Molly winced. "Most people either have no clue or find it repulsive."

"I'm not most people," Mary said.

It felt good to tell the truth about something, at least.

* * *

a/n: Yes, I gave Mary a Russian background. Yes, I remember Magnussen saying she did wet jobs for the CIA. I've decided she gave up official government work and went freelance at some point.


	9. Chapter 9

John sat at the desk transcribing old case notes as Sherlock paced the flat, casually looking out the open front windows whenever he passed. After more than a week since her last visit, by far the longest gap in the six weeks since the shooting, Molly had texted and said she would stop by on her way home from Barts. Sherlock's behavior since had been _very_ interesting. He sighed for the third time in as many minutes and John looked up.

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were waiting on a date."

Sherlock spun round, the dangling ties of his silk dressing gown flapping behind him.

"Don't be ridiculous, John. I don't _date_." He spit out the word with disdain.

"The extra attention to grooming, the careful selection of clothes, the anxious pacing, staring out the window hoping to catch a glimpse of her arrival…."

Sherlock stared at him for a moment, then resumed his pacing, studiously not looking out the window this time.

"So, I bathed. There's nothing special about that."

"And shaved," John added, squinting at his own handwriting. It looked like _horse_ , but surely he meant _house_?

Sherlock rubbed his jaw with one hand. "It was itchy. And there's nothing special about my clothes." Hands in his pockets, he splayed them to reveal pajama bottoms and a white t-shirt. "I'm hardly dressed to impress."

John kept typing. "That's the dressing gown Mycroft bought you that you've steadfastly refused to wear for a month. You're only doing so now because it's new and expensive."

Sherlock spun on one heel and stalked over to his chair. "I don't have to try to impress Molly. She's been impressed with me for years."

John hid his smirk behind his laptop screen _._ "Who said anything about Molly Hooper?"

Sherlock actually spluttered. "But—you said—she's coming over, and—you said—"

"I said 'date' and you said 'Molly.' "

Sherlock's nose went into the air. "I logically concluded you were referring to Molly because she is both female and due to arrive at any time."

"Oh, watching the clock, are we?" John couldn't contain his laughter.

Sherlock popped out of the chair like a jack-in-the-box, then doubled over with a swear, holding his right side. John laughed harder, knowing Sherlock hadn't actually injured himself.

"Shut up," he muttered. He gathered his dressing gown about himself and pretended to look for a book on the shelf to the right of the fireplace—from which position he could unobtrusively glance out the window behind his chair. "I'm bored. Molly is interesting."

"I'll bet she is."

"Not like that," Sherlock said impatiently. "She works in a mortuary, John. She cuts up dead people—"

John couldn't let that slide. "Sherlock, she most definitely is interesting 'like that.' "

He turned, staring blankly.

"Molly Hooper is a very attractive woman, despite her lack of fashion sense. Even you must have noticed by this point."

"You think Molly's attractive? You've never made a pass at her. Not once."

John rolled his eyes. "Because it was obvious she was in love with you, prat."

Sherlock turned back to the bookcase. "Not anymore."

John had his doubts about that, especially after seeing her when Sherlock was in hospital, but he wasn't touching that comment with a ten-foot pole. He returned to his notes, and for a few minutes the only sounds in the flat were the quiet clacking of computer keys, the whisper of turned pages, and the hum of traffic outside the open windows.

"I, er, might have said something … a bit not good. Ages ago, when Mary had her doctor's appointment."

"Yes, I know."

Sherlock looked startled. "She told you?"

"She didn't have to. The tension between you two when I came back was obvious. The air was thick with it."

It happened sometimes at Barts too. John would leave the lab to get a drink or have a piss and then experience that uncomfortable sensation of having interrupted something when he returned.

"I think I made up for it, but—how do you know?"

John sympathized. Women were difficult, even when you weren't a self-proclaimed high-functioning sociopath. "You don't know. Not until she comes back."

Sherlock considered this a moment, turning another page of the book he wasn't reading. "I thought I'd let her beat me at Operation."

John raised his eyebrows. "You think Molly can beat you at Operation?" Not that Sherlock was especially skilled (John had beaten him more than once, even with a shot-up shoulder), but he was hardly known for his humility.

"Don't be stupid, John. Molly is excellent with her hands."

Oh, the potential in that statement….

()()()()

"Hello, Molly." John opened the front door and stepped aside so she could enter. "Go on up. He's been watching for you."

"Thanks." She smiled.

John followed on her heels to find Sherlock in his chair, appearing deeply engrossed in _The Chemistry of Death_. He didn't look up until Molly spoke.

"Hello, Sherlock."

He set the book aside without marking his place. "How was your day?"

"A&E saw a four-year-old with iron poisoning. I brought a copy of the notes for you."

"Thank you." Sherlock took the file she pulled out of her overstuffed satchel and opened it immediately.

"Is he okay?" John asked.

"It doesn't look good."

John reached out and rubbed Molly's arm. She must have helped make the diagnosis. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah. Me too." She shrugged one shoulder, letting her bag _thunk_ off it onto the floor, and dropped onto the sofa with a sigh.

Sherlock looked up, just now cottoning on to the emotional implications.

"Do you want tea? John can make some. And we have biscuits."

So, that's why he'd made the request and then not eaten any after Mrs. Hudson brought up a new package. _Not trying to impress her my arse_.

"Forget tea," John said, heading towards the kitchen. "How about a real drink?"

"Oh, yes, please," Molly said gratefully. "And some biscuits, if you don't mind. Lunch was a bag of Quavers at two."

"I am never taking nutritional advice from you again, Molly Hooper."

"I'm not trying to heal a fifteen centimeter incision and regenerate my liver," she retorted.

"Thank you, Molly," John called.

"I suppose you don't feel like playing Operation," Sherlock said.

"I'll play with you—"

Out of sight behind a cupboard door, John made a face at the ceiling. Did these two never listen to themselves?

"As long as you put that file away. I don't want to think about it any more."

John returned to the sitting room with a glass of wine and a sandwich to see Sherlock sliding the file out of sight under a sofa cushion, where it would be easily accessible to him later.

Molly accepted her food and drink, and John dragged an end table in front of Sherlock's chair as he pulled out the game.

"Sit down," Sherlock said, indicating the chair opposite him.

Mouth full, Molly made a protesting noise and looked towards John.

"Nah, I'm queuing up blog posts of old cases while there aren't any new ones coming in," he said with a smile, returning to his seat at the desk. "Sit."

She carried her glass and plate to his chair and sat down, curling her legs up beside her.

()()()()

Two successful rounds of Operation, one generous glass of wine, and an hour of mindless telly later, Molly looked much more relaxed than when she'd arrived.

"Pizza?" Sherlock suggested as the credits rolled.

"Sounds delicious as long as you get something with vegetables on it."

"Tomato sauce is a vegetable."

"Actually, it's a fruit," Molly said. "The ovary of _Solanum lycopersicum_."

"I'll try to forget that," Sherlock said, scrolling through his mobile for the phone number.

Molly laughed, and John noted the small lift of Sherlock's mouth in response.

"Pick a veg, Sherlock. You know what I like. Excuse me."

John waited until the bathroom door closed behind her. "You've done this before."

"Done what? Yes, I'll hold." Sherlock twisted the phone away from his mouth and looked at John expectantly.

"Hung out with Molly. As friends."

It showed in a zillion little ways: how she didn't flinch when Sherlock invaded her personal space, the mock argument when they were deciding what show to watch, the way they made each other smile, knowing each others' eating habits. Sherlock didn't even eat regularly.

"I told you you should have called Molly instead of Mycroft." Sherlock moved his mobile back to his mouth and began to order.

()()()()

Sherlock breezed into the lab to find Molly performing gross examination of an obviously abnormal surgical specimen.

"Come work with me tomorrow," he said, leaning on the lab bench across from her.

"I'm working on my paper tomorrow." Molly made a note on the form beside her without looking up.

"Bring your notes," Sherlock said. "You can help me solve cases in the morning, and I'll help you research in the afternoon. I'm a very good researcher."

Now she looked up, smiling at him. "You don't need my help to solve cases."

"I do tomorrow. Lots of relationship drama in my inbox. Boring, but—" He gave a dramatic sigh. "It passes the time."

Molly abandoned the specimen, propping both elbows on the worktop and folding her gloved hands together to avoid contaminating anything with her touch. "You just want me there in case someone starts crying."

"You're good with people in emotional states. I am not. Hence why I usually avoid these types of cases, not to mention they are simple and uninteresting, but…."

"You're bored, and some work is better than no work."

"Obviously. Come to Baker Street tomorrow." He clasped his hands behind his back. It really was a vapid line-up of work, but Molly's presence would improve it immensely.

"I'm probably going to need the library," she said in a warning tone.

"Fine. We'll go to the library after we solve the cases John deems appropriate for this stage of my recovery."

"This stage?"

"He got Mycroft to help him hack my email and is deleting anything of genuine interest."

"How do you know that?" Molly returned to her work, measuring the mass's margins.

"He forgot to delete the sent emails." Sherlock smirked.

She laughed. "I'm sure your physiotherapist would agree with him you don't need to be chasing criminals round London just yet."

He shrugged. "No idea. I dismissed her weeks ago."

"Sherlock!"

"I don't need her standing over me to remember how to perform a specific set of exercises."

Molly gave him a stern look—well, stern for Molly, at least. "So long as you are doing them."

"Come to Baker Street tomorrow and I'll show you." He smiled.

Molly blushed. She hadn't done that just because he smiled at her in— _oh_. Sherlock swallowed as the subtext of his offer caught up to him. _That's why_.

"All right," she agreed. "But I want to be at the library by one o'clock. They close at five on Fridays."

"Do you, ah, need any help?"

Molly shook her head, reaching for a scalpel to begin sectioning. "No, after this I have yesterday's slides to review. Go ahead and start on whatever you came for."

Sherlock did not say he came to Barts today specifically to invite Molly to work with him.

"I have some things to do to prepare for tomorrow," he said instead. "My first appointment is at half eight."

"Okay," Molly said, turning her head one way, then the other, absorbed in her selection of where to cut. "See you later."

Sherlock watched her for a moment longer and left the lab.

()()()()

The following week, Sherlock pulled open the glass doors of New Scotland Yard, ignoring the reporter (print, not telly—the bulge of a recording device in the front pocket of her leather bag and a folded newspaper visible beside her laptop in the unzipped main compartment) he'd nearly knocked over in his haste to get inside. He'd come here straight from his appointment because the surgeon had _finally_ cleared him to "resume normal activities."

Sherlock found Lestrade standing in front of a murder board, which he flipped to its blank side when he saw Sherlock approaching. He followed the detective inspector to his office, where he was handed not a police case file, but a consent to drugs testing form.

He didn't take it. "I'm not an addict. I was shot."

Lestrade took a seat behind his desk, setting the paper between them. "The rules haven't changed, Sherlock. I told you years ago if you want to work on police cases, you have to stay clean."

"They're prescription." He had a new one burning a hole in his pocket as they spoke. A lower dose, and only fourteen days' worth, not thirty, but he'd convinced the surgeon to write it all the same.

"They have to go. If you want official work."

"What about unofficial work?"

"I'm serious, Sherlock. I can't give you access to sensitive information or have you mixing with criminals if you're under the influence."

"I'm the cleverest man in this building even when I am high!"

Lestrade neither flinched nor argued, just stuck to his point like a terrier with a bone. "No drugs test, no work. I have to back you with the higher-ups, and I can't do that without proof."

Sherlock stepped closer to the desk and dropped his voice. "I _need_ the work. The drugs slow it some, take the edge off, but it's the challenge of a complicated case that keeps my mind occupied. Let me see what you're working on. Five minutes in front of the murder board, and if I can't solve the case, I'll get you your drugs test."

"This is not a bet, Sherlock." Lestrade pushed the form towards Sherlock again. "Do the test or don't. It's up to you. But you're not getting in on any of my cases without it."

Sherlock spun on his heel and left the office.


	10. Chapter 10

Sherlock was sitting in the midst of his Magnussen case file, looking for a solution other than the high treason he was planning, when John came down the stairs. He stopped when he saw him.

"Have you been up all night?"

Sherlock looked up and took note of the full daylight streaming through the windows for the first time. "Considering that London experiences a mere five hours or so of darkness this time of year, it's hardly a notable accomplishment."

"Sherlock…."

"What!"

"Forget it." John turned to the lockbox on the round bar table against the kitchen wall.

"I don't want them."

"What?"

Sherlock gathered the notes and clippings, pulling them towards himself in quick, jerky movements that actually scattered them farther. "I don't want the drugs." He lunged in one direction, then the next, collecting the papers at random. "I don't need them."

John came closer, turning on lights as he did so before squatting to look Sherlock directly in the face. Sherlock stared back but sniffed despite himself.

"How long since your last dose?" John said evenly.

"What time is it now?"

"What time do I normally get up for work?"

"Between six thirty-seven and six forty-four. You always hit snooze at least once." Sherlock crossed to his desk and began rifling through its contents, shifting books and folders, pushing items first to one side, then the other, looking for the notes Molly had given him. John wouldn't protest him working all night if it was for Molly, and she'd asked Sherlock's opinion on a stack of references she was considering for her research paper.

"Let's assume it's about that time, then," John said, having not moved from his position in the center of the room. "How long since your last dose?"

"Almost twenty-four hours."

"Sherlock!" There was the exasperation he knew John had been holding at bay. "You've been taking some form of narcotic round the clock for two months! What the hell?"

"Don't need them anymore. Pain's fine." Not exactly true, but close enough. He could handle it. He swiped his nose with the sleeve of his dressing gown and began shaking books by their covers. Molly's notes had to be here somewhere….

"All right, fine. You want to come off the drugs. We can do that—but slowly, Sherlock. You should be weaned to avoid withdrawal."

"I've done it before." He spun towards the bookshelves. Had he actually put them away?

"Yeah, in rehab. With monitoring and support. You don't just randomly decide to—"

"Would you shut up about the drugs! I don't need them, I don't want them, I'm not going to take them!"

John pressed his lips together, turned away, turned back. Sherlock tossed books off their shelf one at a time, hoping any loose papers would be freed by the force of gravity.

"Cold turkey," John said. "That's your plan. You're just magically not going to get high any more."

"Don't be stupid, John. I haven't been high in months."

"That's what you think now." He watched Sherlock ransack the room for a few moments before he spoke again. "Did Mr. Mudan clear you to return to work?"

"Yes." For all the good it did.

Sherlock abandoned the bookcase and avoided stepping on any books by climbing into his chair, onto the desk, and down onto the coffee table, where he knelt to search under the sofa cushions.

"What the hell are you looking for, anyway? Or are you just destroying the flat for fun?"

"Molly's notes. She wanted me to review some references for her since I read at three times the speed she does."

"So, if you've been given the green light to work cases again, why are you playing Molly's research assistant?"

Having determined the papers weren't underneath the sofa either, Sherlock straightened, then staggered as the room tilted on its axis. "Rush of blood away from the brain, compensatory mechanisms impaired by altered brain chemistry," he muttered.

"Yeah, jackass, it's called 'vertigo,' " John said, having made no attempt to steady him. "Sit down before you fall down."

Unlike the other rubbish John had spouted so far this morning, this was wise counsel, so Sherlock complied, gripping the sofa arm with one hand to make sure it didn't decide to float away too.

"Mr. Mudan cleared you to return to work but—ah. Greg didn't, did he? You went to Scotland Yard, and Greg said you had to pass a drugs test."

"An absolute waste of time," Sherlock said, letting go of the sofa since it seemed to be behaving as furniture now and staying in place. "Like I can't run circles around them in any capacity."

"That's not the point, though, is it? Really, what did you expect?"

Sherlock stood, slowly this time, then made his way to the coat rack and began digging in the Belstaff's pockets. He'd been at Barts when Molly gave him the papers; maybe he'd put them in a pocket and left them there. If he had a dose, he could probably remem—

No. No drugs. His brain might feel fuzzy now, but it would be better without the oxycodone. Eventually.

"Did Mudan give you a new script yesterday?"

"I shredded it." Before he even left the Yard. Dropped it in one of the police bins.

"Got anything stashed in the flat?"

"The usual places."

"Go get it."

Sherlock turned round, nearly pulling the coat rack over since he still had one hand in the inside pocket. He pulled and tugged, but the coat simply turned itself inside out without freeing his appendage.

"Dammit." He sniffed, then blinked several times as his vision blurred with tears from the excess lacrimation.

"Here." John crossed the room. "Hold still."

"I can do it myself!"

"If you mean flip the coat rack over and break a lamp, I know you can." John caught the arm Sherlock was still flailing around. "For god's sake, Sherlock, just—"

"I can't hold still! My skin feels like it's on inside out and this coat itches!"

John peeled the coat off Sherlock's arm, turned it right-side out, and returned it to the (pushed out of arm's reach) coat rack.

"Bring me the drugs. Oxy, morphine, coke—whatever you've got. Bring it to me, and I'll get rid of it."

Sherlock scrubbed his face with his collar. Damn his overreacting hypothalmus. "You'll help me?"

"Yes, of course I'll help. I've been weaning you for the last fortnight, anyway."

"I know," Sherlock said, walking towards his bedroom.

"I know you know," John said with a sigh.

()()()()

John ran one hand through his hair, mobile pressed to his ear, waiting for Molly to pick up.

"Hello?"

"Molly, I'm sorry to bother you this late." John kept his voice pitched low; Sherlock had sound sensitivity in spades.

"What's the matter? What's wrong with Sherlock?"

"He decided to go cold turkey."

"What! When?"

"As best I can determine, a little over forty hours ago."

Molly groaned.

"Yeah, it's pretty bad. He, er, he asked me to call you. I've tried to convince him you're not the only source of paracetamol in London, but he's insistent. Something about a magic headache cure?"

"Well, I doubt it will work for this, but I can try," she said. "Tell him I'm coming over."

"Don't even think about getting on the Tube," John said. "Call a taxi and text me when you get here. I'll come down and pay."

"Oh, you don't have—"

"Molly," John said sternly. "I insist. Besides, I need you to make a stop for me. Do you know a late night chemist between your flat and ours?"

()()()()

Leaving John to pay the cabbie, Molly went through the open door and climbed the stairs to Sherlock's flat. It was nearly pitch-black and absolutely stifling. The only light was a soft glow from the kitchen, and the heavy curtains were drawn across the windows. The air was unnaturally warm, not just stagnant, as if John had actually turned the heat on despite it being the middle of August. Underneath the earthy scent of sweat was the faint stench of vomit, and Molly stepped carefully, keen not to overturn whatever Sherlock was using as an emesis basin.

"You came." His voice was gravelly and unmistakably relieved.

"Of course I did." She set her bags on the desk since the coffee table was littered with the dark shapes of unidentifiable objects. "I have your meds. I need to turn a light on to read the labels, okay?" She reached for the desk lamp, keeping her body between the light source and Sherlock as she dug in the chemist bag.

"All right, we're going to start with sublingual ondansetron for the nausea. Open your mouth." She waited for Sherlock to lift his tongue and dropped the pill in place.

He looked dreadful. His curls were darkened with sweat and matted against his head, his face was wet and shiny with what Molly suspected was a combination of snot and tears as his body overcompensated in the absence of the drying effect of the opiods, his skin prickled with goosebumps even in the heat, and he lay curled into a fetal position, clutching the same blanket Molly had seen when he first came home from hospital.

"We're going to let that dissolve, and then hopefully you can keep down the clonidine and paracetamol and you're going to have a bath," she informed him.

"Too tired."

"Too bad."

"Okay."

Molly stood and turned the light off, doing what tidying she could in the darkness. John returned, closing the door to the landing that Molly had automatically left open.

"Sorry about the heat. I've been trying not to turn it on because it's harder to cool the flat than it is to warm him up, but he actually had rigors a couple hours ago that I couldn't stop."

"It's all right," Molly said, having already peeled off her jumper. "I gave him the ondansetron. The other meds are on the desk. I can see why the clonidine patches weren't working." There was hardly a dry square inch on him anywhere, despite his chills.

"Thanks, Molly. Really. You're a lifesaver."

"How are you holding up?"

Leaning against the door as if it were the only thing keeping him upright, John didn't look much better than Sherlock.

"I could use a couple hours of sleep," he admitted.

"Go. I'll take care of Sherlock."

He opened his mouth to protest, but Molly didn't give him a chance.

"Go," she repeated. "He's too sick to be much trouble right now."

"I'm worried about the headache," John said quietly, glancing in Sherlock's direction. "It's not typical for withdrawal. Do you think—"

"He's had bad headaches whenever he's physiologically stressed ever since he jumped," Molly said. "I _know_ he was concussed after that."

John said nothing for a moment, considering.

"If it's still there in the morning, take him in. They don't usually last more than a day or so," Molly said.

"Go to bed, John. Molly and I will be fine."

John pushed himself away from the door to point a finger in Sherlock's direction. "Do not be an arse, do you hear me?"

"No more than usual. In fact, I'll even apologize in advance. I'm sorry for being an arse tonight, Molly."

"God. Are you sure we can't just put him under?"

Molly grinned. "I'll drown him in the bath if he gets too mouthy."

"Don't lie, Molly Hooper. Goodnight, John."

()()()()

Sherlock was able to keep the other meds down, and Molly half-dragged, half-bullied him into the bathroom, then entered his bedroom to find a change of clothes.

She'd never been in here before.

It was surprisingly tidy given the usual state of the rest of the flat, with a plain cream duvet wadded at the foot of the bed and a colorful rendering of the periodic table on the wall behind the door. Molly crossed to the dresser, taking an undershirt and pants from the top drawer and opening and closing the rest of them quickly until she found what she was looking for, pajama bottoms. Wrapping everything into a bundle, she knocked twice on the bathroom door before opening it with her eyes closed and setting the clothing beside the sink. Returning to the bedroom, she stripped the bed (not imagining Sherlock in it—not, not, _not_ , Molly told herself firmly) and began the hunt for clean sheets. Finding them in the first place she looked, the well-organized linen cupboard between the bathroom and bedroom (Mrs. Hudson was so their housekeeper), Molly took a neatly folded, fresh-smelling set and remade the bed, giving the duvet a good shaking before spreading it in place.

Satisfied with her work in there, she returned to the sitting room, changing out the pillowcases Sherlock had been using on the sofa with clean ones and adding the rumpled and sweaty blanket to the pile of laundry. Scrounging up a scrap of paper at the desk without disturbing anything was more challenging, but Molly found the pack of journal articles she'd asked Sherlock to skim through and tore off a page of bibliography. She wrote a quick note to Mrs. Hudson saying she would take care of the washing in the morning and set the whole thing out on the landing. By the time she finished, Sherlock was making his way down the hall.

He still looked dreadful, but at least he no longer smelled that way.

"How do you feel?"

He glared at her, which Molly considered a distinct improvement from the exhausted and unnaturally compliant Sherlock when she'd first arrived.

"Like I need a fix."

"How's the headache?"

"Booming."

She hadn't expected paracetamol to work, not when his body was conditioned to much stronger medicine. He stretched out on the sofa, moving more carefully than he'd done in weeks.

"Muscle cramps?" she asked.

He nodded, covering his eyes with his arm despite the darkness of the room.

"Do you think you could eat something? A bit of toast, maybe? Or soup?"

He grunted a denial. "C'mere." Then added, "please."

A polite Sherlock was irresistible, so Molly picked up the bottle of lavender oil and squeezed into the space he allotted her on one end. Sherlock shifted to lay his head in her lap, and she took a moment to smooth back the shower-damp curls before placing a hand on each temple, rubbing in small circles.

"You'd feel better if you ate something," she said after a few minutes. "If your blood sugar is low, it will worsen your headache."

"No."

"Still nauseous?"

"No. And I'd like to keep it that way."

She conceded, planning to pick up the argument later. "Well, then, try to sleep."

"Can't."

But he was relaxing, his neck conforming to the curve of her thigh, his hands no longer fisted but lying open on his stomach, the little furrows between his brows smoothing out. Molly shifted her hands, sliding down to the masseter muscle. They'd discovered this technique quite by accident after the Fall, when Sherlock had had such a severe headache and enough dizziness to make him clumsy—Sherlock, with all that balletic grace—that Molly had nearly been in tears trying to convince him to go to hospital, and Sherlock had been desperate enough to try anything else.

"When's the last time you slept?"

"A few hours on Monday."

Two nights ago—or longer; knowing Sherlock, it could have been the early hours of Monday morning. Molly had seen him go without sleep longer than that when on a case, but this was different. Without something to occupy his mind, some activity to do, and with the added physical stress of the withdrawal, he needed sleep more than ever.

"What do you usually do when you can't sleep?" Molly asked, thinking she would try to replicate it for him.

"I go see you."

She froze, her fingers still framing his face, and stared down at the planes and angles of his bone structure, dramatically outlined in the semi-darkness. The lines between his eyebrows bunched together again as he frowned, opening both eyes to study her own expression.

"Not … good?"

"No! No, it's fine, more than fine, I—" Molly swallowed and resumed the massage, resisting the urge to tangle her fingers in his curls. "I just never knew that."

"Why did you think I always showed up at odd hours?"

"They weren't odd hours for you."

He smiled and closed his eyes again, settling himself more comfortably. "That's what I like about you, Molly Hooper. You're always thinking about everyone else."

"So, should I put on _Glee_ and find some ice cream?" she teased.

"You can watch _Glee_. My laptop's on the desk. We don't have any ice cream."

Molly smiled. He never admitted to watching anything with her, always pretending to be absorbed in his phone or his mind palace, but she knew better. She changed her touch again, drawing slow lines up the center of his forehead and down either side.

"I changed your sheets and set everything out on the landing. I'll wash them in the morning after Mrs. Hudson is up."

"Is that where my blanket is?" He rolled over, putting his back to her.

Realizing he'd had enough, Molly dropped her hands. "Mm-hmm. Did your mum make it for you?" It was obviously designed just for Sherlock, with patchwork composed of blocks of rotational and mirror symmetry, various patterns of fractions as equal area divisions, and fractals.

He nodded, his stubble catching on the knit fabric of her leggings. "When I went to boarding school."

"That was nice, to have something from home."

He didn't answer but Molly smiled. Sherlock would not have kept the blanket all these years if it wasn't associated with good memories.

"Sherlock?"

"Mmm."

"Before you fall asleep, will you hand me the remote? I can't reach it."

He stretched one long arm out, and Molly knew by the way he fumbled on the coffee table, patting it in a wide arc, that he kept his eyes closed. He found it and passed it back to her. Molly pulled down the bright orange blanket she'd draped on the back of the sofa (which looked suspiciously like the ones used by ambulance services), spread it over Sherlock, and settled in for some late-night telly.

()()()()

John woke two hours later, slammed his alarm clock off, and forced himself up. He sat on the side of the bed for a minute, head in his hands, elbows braced on his knees, and reminded himself he'd done harder work on less sleep, but right now, he felt every one of his forty-two years. He staggered down the stairs with one eye cracked open, entered the sitting room—and opened both eyes wide.

Sherlock lay on the sofa with his head in Molly's lap. They were both asleep, Molly's head tipped back such that she'd have a sore neck later and one hand resting on Sherlock's shoulder. John felt a stab of envy so sharp it took his breath away.

He missed Mary. Missed the sex, sure, but more than that he missed the closeness, the friendship. Her snarky sense of humor, her gentleness, her smile. How she squeezed the toothpaste tube from the middle and sang off-key when she baked. The way she could read his moods, the way she lit up any room she walked into and made him remember what a lucky sod he actually was (despite other evidence to the contrary). She was nineteen weeks pregnant with their child, and they should have been anticipating the birth together. He should be watching his daughter grow day by day as her mother's body changed, but instead he was left wondering who his wife really was. Whether or not it mattered who she'd been or just who she was now with him, with their friends, with their daughter. Whether he could ever trust her again.

John looked back at the detective and the pathologist, lit only by the flickering light from the muted telly. Regardless of the nature of their relationship, whether friends or something more (and this looked a lot like "more"), Sherlock had someone he could trust implicitly.

John hoped he knew how valuable that was.


	11. Chapter 11

A/N: This is my favorite chapter :) I hope y'all enjoy it as well! Next chap is the last. I tried to change the cover art to the second piece drawn by Rebka 18 (rebka18 dot tumblr dot com), but FF won't cooperate with me-shocker. I'll keep trying, but I didn't want to delay posting any longer.

* * *

Molly sat in the restaurant courtyard, waiting for Mary to arrive. The August sun was still high in the sky, and Molly had chosen an outdoor table to take advantage of the rapidly shortening days. She spotted Mary talking with a waitress and raised her hand to wave.

"Hi," Mary said, pulling out a chair and sitting down. "Thanks for meeting me on a weeknight."

"Knowing we had this planned made my Monday infinitely brighter," Molly said. "Well?" She leaned forward. "What did the scan show? Did the baby cooperate?"

Mary beamed, laying one hand on her tummy. "She did."

"A girl! Aww, that's lovely. Congratulations." Molly whipped out a pink candyfloss lolly from her bag.

Mary took it, laughing. "Do you have a blue one in there too?"

"Of course."

Mary unwrapped the sweet, popping it into her mouth as she opened her menu. Then she looked up, dropping the menu back onto the table. "Thank you, Molly. I—it's nice to have someone to share with."

"It is, isn't it? I love Toby to death—he's my cat—but sometimes you need someone who talks back."

"You have a cat?"

"Mm-hmm. A tabby."

"Do you have any pictures?"

Molly stared at her in surprise. No one ever asked to see pictures of Toby. Of dogs and babies, yes—Tom had showed pics of his dog to anyone who expressed even the vaguest interest in animals—but by the time Molly had pulled out her mobile to share about her own pet, the others were always deep in dog discussion.

"You want to see pictures of my cat?"

Mary nodded. "How long have you had him?"

"About four years." Molly pulled up a pic of Toby curled inside a small Amazon box and passed over her mobile.

"Aww, he's adorable! Look at those white markings. It makes me want to rub between his eyes."

"He'd like that. Do you have any pets?"

"Are you ladies ready to order?"

It was the same waitress Mary had been speaking with earlier. Molly gave a guilty start and grabbed her menu.

"I'm sorry, we've been talking. I'll, um … I'll have…." She scanned the menu for something appealing.

"If you could give us a few more minutes, please," Mary said.

"I'm sorry," Molly said again once the waitress had left.

"It's all right," Mary said, returning her mobile. "I haven't finished my lolly, anyway."

Molly smiled back. Mary liked lollies, cats, and Sherlock and wasn't afraid to eat dessert first. This friendship had potential.

()()()()

John flipped up his coat collar against the rain and jumped out of the taxi, ducking his head as he ran towards the tent in the middle of the pitch. Nodding a greeting to some of the officers he recognized standing outside, he lifted the flap and pushed through the cluster of police and scenes of crime officers, knowing he'd find Sherlock in the center of the chaos.

"Sorry, I got here as soon as I could," he said, shaking water off his coat.

"Took you long enough."

"I—" John's retort about being busy doing the shopping _Sherlock had requested_ died on his lips as Sherlock stood and turned round, revealing a small figure in a blue—or maybe green?— jumper kneeling in front of him.

John hid a smile. He had already been on his way back to Baker Street when Sherlock texted him about a new case and had simply thrown the cold foods in the refrigerator and rushed back out the door. Sherlock must have contacted Molly immediately despite the fact John couldn't be more than ten minutes behind him, but that didn't mean Sherlock had any particular affection for the petite pathologist. Of course not.

"Hello, Molly."

"Hello." But she didn't look up, absorbed in her examination of the dead body before her. John circled the victim to join her from the opposite side.

"Cause of death seems pretty obvi—oh!"

John looked from the knife still buried in the victim's back (seventh intercostal space, near the spine; definitely penetrating the lung, and quite possibly the heart) to Molly's face. She was bent over the patient's—well, it was a patient for her—face and examining his mouth, which was turned away from John.

"It's poison," she said, shooting a triumphant look up at Sherlock. "Don't ask me how she hauled him out here or how he went undiscovered in the middle of a football pitch, but you're not looking for a violent man with a knife. You're looking for a woman, a clever one. I'm guessing carbon monoxide poisoning, but I'd have to see the lab work to know for certain." Molly stood and removed her gloves. "Clever," she said again. "She stabbed him after death to obfuscate the COD. There won't be any evidence at her location to tie her to the crime."

"Yes, owning a carbon-fuel-burning device and a chef's knife is hardly cause for suspicion," Sherlock said.

John noticed how he took Molly's word for the source of the poisoning without any additional proof. It could be CO poisoning, but there were no pathognomonic signs and without a live patient or witness to interview, it was impossible to know without blood work. Then again, Molly was a hell of a pathologist, even if she didn't normally work in the field, and had likely seen CO poisoning before, whether intentional or not.

"Now, how did she get him here?" Sherlock turned in a circle, his hands in his coat pockets. "You lot! Stop moving!"

A few people looked up, but no one stopped working.

"Lestrade!" Sherlock bellowed.

John experienced a twinge of nostalgia for the days when Sherlock's wound prevented him from drawing the deep breaths needed to shout at people.

The detective inspector broke off his conversation with Sergeant Donovan and approached. "Yes, Sherlock, what is it?"

"This damn rain! It's washing away all the evidence. Tell everyone to stop moving."

"We can't do that. We need to keep working because of the rain. We're hardly going to have any trace evidence as it is."

"I need to figure out how she got him here and whether or not she's working alone. In order to do that, I need to examine the ground around the body, and if everyone is trampling all over the pitch, there won't be anything left to find!"

"All right, all right. Start on that end." Greg indicated the far side of the tent. "I'll keep everyone on this side."

"Molly, you go right. John, left," Sherlock ordered, striding forward.

"What are we looking for?" Molly asked, staring out at the steady rain already puddling in the paths made by people and equipment.

"Clues!"

She sighed.

"Welcome to my world," John said, and they shared a wry smile.

()()()()

John and Molly stood at the edge of the football pitch, now so wet they didn't even attempt to shield themselves from the rain. Nearly an hour examining the grass in ever-widening concentric circles had yielded nothing of significance; between the dozen or so people working the scene and the relentless precipitation, the ground was a morass of overlapping footprints, drag marks, and even tire tracks. The medical examiner's van had backed up to the tent entrance to remove the body as privately as possible thanks to the addition of local residents on the sidelines, whose various shades of dark umbrellas overlapped each other like the patchwork of a turtle's shell. Sherlock, who had been in the rain as much as John and Molly but somehow avoided looking like a drowned rat, joined them.

"Where's your coat?" he demanded of Molly.

Having been split up during the search, John hadn't noticed she was wearing nothing over her jumper, now darkened to a definite blue. It even had little holes in it, like lace.

"It's not that far from the Tube to your flat. I brought my cardigan."

So, Molly must have already been at Baker Street when Sherlock caught the case. Not that spending their free time with each other, or working for free—which was essentially what Molly was doing—gave any indication of their feelings for one another (according to Sherlock, at least).

"You've lived in London for how long, Molly?"

"Shut up. It wasn't raining when I left home, and it wasn't that cold, either."

"I ask again—"

"All right, Sherlock," John interrupted. "Come on, Molly, you'll never warm up as wet as that thing is. Take it off and we'll find someone with a blanket in the boot."

"I can't," she muttered.

"Why not?" Sherlock asked.

"Maybe she's not wearing anything underneath it," John said under his breath.

Sherlock looked her up and down for a moment before looking over their heads. "Where's Donovan? Maybe she has an extra jacket you could wear."

"No—I mean, yes, of course I'm wearing something underneath it, but…." Molly bit her lip, looking extremely uncomfortable.

You didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to understand why. Now that John looked properly, he could see Molly's skin tone showing through a white undershirt exposed by those little lace holes. And transparency was not her only problem, judging by the way she was keeping her arms tightly crossed over her chest.

"Ah, the pilomotor reflex," Sherlock said.

John half turned away from her and covered his face with one hand. "For the love of—"

"Not good." Sherlock swallowed.

That was a statement, not his usual questioning tone, and John turned back to see Molly glaring up at the detective, who was now the uncomfortable one.

"Sorry," he said meekly.

John could count on one hand the number of times he'd heard Sherlock apologize, and it still amazed him.

"It would have been politer to ignore the situation," Molly said.

"I was deducing and it just slipped out," Sherlock muttered.

"Where _is_ Sally?" Molly said, putting her back to them and making a show of looking over the crowd.

"Here, take mine," John said, reaching for the zip on his own coat.

But before he could shrug it off, Sherlock swung the Belstaff over Molly's shoulders. Her posture relaxed at once with the sudden warmth, but she still protested.

"Oh, no, Sherlock, you'll get wet."

"I'm already wet."

"No, you're not. Not wet through."

This was perfectly true; Sherlock's hair was soaked (he'd slicked it back to keep his fringe from dripping into his eyes), and the bottom six inches of his trousers were stiff with mud, but the wool coat was thick enough to have kept the rest of him dry, the bastard.

"But you just got out of hospital," Molly argued, trying to shrug the garment off even as Sherlock did up the buttons for her. "You'll get sick."

An argument John knew was doomed to fail since he'd tried three variations of it over the last hour without success.

"I was released from hospital over two months ago, Molly. Besides, you know better than I that illness is caused by germs, not bad weather."

"Yes, but—"

"Do you feel better now?"

Her delicate jaw firmed, and she tried to cross her arms again but only got tangled in the excessively long sleeves.

"Do you?"

"I'm too short. I'll drag it through the mud."

John's eyes dropped to the coat's hem, which brushed Molly's ankles.

Sherlock waved this concern away. "I have lots of coats."

Two. He had two and he loved them both. Sherlock was generally as likely to share his belongings as appropriate John's, but no one touched The Coat. John stepped back out of Molly's line of sight and raised his eyebrows in dispute, which Sherlock pretended not to see.

Molly wrapped her arms round herself, but in a gesture of contentment, not protection. "You don't mind?"

"I don't do anything I don't want to do, Molly. You know that."

She gave in with a smile. "Thank you, Sherlock."

"You're very welcome, Molly Hooper."

He reached out and pulled her ponytail from the collar of the coat in a surprisingly tender gesture that John expected to make Molly blush, but she just extended her arms expectantly, the sleeves dangling inches past her fingertips. Sherlock accepted her wordless request, folding the sleeves back in a wide cuff until the entirety of her fine-boned hand was exposed, then repeating the process on the other side.

Meanwhile, John stood unnoticed in the rain. Sometimes, not very often, but sometimes, it was like a bubble descended over these two. Thin and fragile, diaphanous, it separated them from the world around them, and in this separation joined them together. You couldn't see it, and it never lasted for long; invariably one of them would move, or speak, or something as fine as a change of expression would be enough to break it, and you would doubt it was ever there. But tonight it was visible in Molly's sweet smile, in Sherlock's softened features, an unspoken understanding, a recognition of the other. _Yes, I see you. Yes, I accept you_. _Yes, you matter to me._

Unbidden, Mary's face floated into his mind's eye, and John saw her repeating her vows. He ignored the stabbing of his heart (or was that his conscience?), but sure enough, in the space of that small distraction the bubble had burst and Sherlock was striding away, muttering about taxis.

The instant Sherlock's back was turned, Molly snugged her face down into the collar of the coat, closed her eyes, and inhaled. John couldn't resist.

"All right, there, Molls?"

She opened her eyes to give him a dark look (he rather got the impression she was more upset about being interrupted while savoring the experience than she was about being teased) before sweeping past him after Sherlock. John followed in their wake, suddenly not minding the rain dripping on his face or his socks squishing in his shoes or even his damp collar chafing against his chin.

Something told him this was going to be good.

()()()()

John was not disappointed.

While he would have appreciated both the speed and the warmth of a taxi ride home from the suburbs, watching Sherlock shoot worried glances at Molly every time they turned a corner and no taxi appeared, or Sherlock spotted one only to realize its light was off, was entertainment in itself. It only got better the farther they walked, as Sherlock's face would twist into a scowl and his body stiffen in frustration. Then he would catch sight of Molly, smooth out his expression, and shorten his stride to match hers. It was almost as if … he were trying to impress her.

Not that he would admit to such a thing.

Molly walked with cool dignity despite her ridiculous outfit, her practical shoes and dripping ponytail the only familiar aspects of her silhouette. She shot Sherlock the occasional worried glance as the rain continued and his jacket gradually darkened from the shoulders downward. But he seemed utterly indifferent to the wetness, and Molly's only fussing was to urge him on towards the Tube station whenever he paused at an intersection, searching the cross street for taxis.

Sherlock positively sulked when they reached the Tube first, but both John and Molly breathed a sigh of relief to be out of the rain. They rode in companionable silence, doing their best not to drip on their fellow passengers, until they approached Baker Street Station. John and Sherlock moved towards the doors, but Molly remained seated.

"Molly, this is our stop," Sherlock said.

"No, it's your stop. I still have half a dozen stops before my transfer."

"Come to Baker Street," Sherlock urged as the train slowed and the platform came into view. "You can change clothes and warm up and take a taxi home later."

"No," Molly said, uncharacteristically stubborn. "I want a bath and my pajamas and my own bed, thank you very much."

The train lurched to a stop.

"It's almost another hour on the Tube before you'll be home. You could shower and change at my flat in half that time."

"Goodnight, Sherlock."

John stepped onto the platform and moved to the side, out of the way of the boarding passengers.

"Molly!"

"Go on. I'll be fine."

"Sherlock, come on!"

He cleared the doors just before they closed and watched as the train pulled out of the station.

"You know, I'm not sure which you're more sorry to see go," John said, "your coat or Molly."

Sherlock tugged his suit jacket straight and turned towards the passageway for home.

()()()()

She wasn't supposed to look like that.

Sherlock was eight inches taller than Molly Hooper, and she should have looked like a child playing dress-up in his coat. John would look like a child playing dress-up in his coat. But Molly had simply looked … adorable. Endearing. _Cute_.

Sherlock shuddered at the sentimental adjectives and slid deeper into the bath.

She was right, she had dragged it through the mud, but he found himself not caring. He had been completely unsuccessful at hailing a taxi in the suburbs on a Sunday evening, and the coat's hem had swept the floors of stairs, moving staircases, trains, and three separate Tube stations as well as nearly a mile of London pavement. The coat hung off Molly's slight frame as she walked, the shoulder seams halfway down her upper arms, the collar gaping round her neckline, the sleeves rolled up four turns to free her hands. Even buttoned, she actually had room to pull her arms inside the body of the garment and wrap them round herself, as she had done for warmth because her arms were too short to reach the pockets.

Simply adorable.

Sherlock groaned and ducked his head underwater.

 _"_ _The problem is not how she looks." Mind John sat in his chair facing Sherlock._ " _The problem is how you_ ** _feel_** _about how she looks."_

 _"_ _Caring is not an advantage." Mycroft, in the same chair, the day after Sherlock had returned to London._

 _"_ _Piss off, Mycroft."_

 _That was one of the better things about Mind John—he often verbalized things the real John was too polite to say._

 _"_ _I don't feel anything," Sherlock insisted._

 _Mind John gave him a look. "That's why you're hiding in your imagination in a bath of cold water even though there's warm clothes, tea, and a fire waiting for you in real life."_

Sherlock sat up, pulled the plug, waited for a couple inches of water to drain, replaced the plug, and spun the hot tap.

 _"_ _Happy now?"_

 _"_ _The question is, are you?"_

 _"_ _Molly has my coat."_

 _"_ _You have another coat. And that lovesick look on your face as you watched the train carry her away from you wasn't about a hunk of wool and thread, but a woman of flesh and blood. Very nice flesh, if I may say so."_

 _"_ _I am not lovesick!"_

 _Another look._

 _Sherlock abandoned his mental image of 221B and moved deeper into his mind palace, into his private rooms._

 _What did he think about how Molly looked?_

 _Objectively speaking, she was pleasant to look at, with symmetrical features; a smooth, English rose complexion; dark doe eyes—_

 _"_ _Objective?" The Woman snorted. "Darling, I think you need to review the meaning of the word."_

 _Sherlock's first instinct was to order her out, but he was drawn up short by her appearance._

 _"_ _You are not adorable."_

 _The Woman smiled her mysterious smile. "That's deliberate."_

 _"_ _It is, isn't it?" Sherlock circled her, dressed not in her battle dress but his navy dressing gown, her hair down and wet as it had been when he'd found her sleeping in his bed._

 _What would Molly look like wearing his dressing gown and lying on his bed?_

 _Trouble. An attraction to Molly would be nothing but trouble, and one troublesome woman in his mind was more than enough. He focused on the one in front of him._

 _"_ _So. You're beautiful by conventional standards but not endearing or adorable. Why?"_

 _If he knew why The Woman wasn't, he could figure out why Molly is. And change his perception of her._

 _"_ _Oh, Sherlock. Do you really have to ask?"_

 _He continued his examination of her from all angles. "You wore my coat once. You wore my coat and were in a vulnerable position, and I never thought of you as adorable."_

 _She smiled. "I had a riding crop when I wore your coat."_

 _That still stung, in more ways than one. "Not at first, you didn't. You had a gun to your head."_

 _"_ _That was John."_

 _Sherlock sighed. "You're distracting me."_

 _"_ _I'm good at that," she purred._

 _"_ _Yes, you are. Molly's not." Sherlock stopped suddenly. "I don't find Molly distracting, I find her stimulating."_

 _The Woman laughed, low and sensual. Sherlock ignored her._

 _"_ _She helps me focus. I can work with Molly in the room. She knows how not to bother me."_

 _"_ _And is that adorable?" The Woman asked, adjusting her—his—dressing gown with more flapping of fabric than required._

 _"_ _No," Sherlock said slowly, circling her again. "I don't find Molly adorable when we're working. Not usually. Not because of what she wears."_

 _"_ _Just when she wears something of yours."_

 _Even in the privacy of his mind, Sherlock didn't want to answer that._

 _"_ _It's not about the clothing," he said instead. "We've already established that. You wore my coat and my dressing gown and while you looked … softer in the latter, you didn't look like Molly. I—"_

 _"_ _You didn't feel the same way about how we looked."_

 _"_ _No," he said softly._

 _"_ _How did you feel?"_

 _Sherlock scoffed. "I'm a high-functioning sociopath. We do not have feelings."_

 _"_ _Oh, darling," The Woman said, stepping close and running one finger down his lapel. "There's no need to hide from me. I know what you like, and her name is Molly Hooper."_


	12. Chapter 12

A/N: I was finally able to update the cover art to reflect a scene from chapter 11 drawn by Rebka 18 (rebka18 dot tumblr dot com).

* * *

Sherlock surveyed the kitchen, trying to see it through Molly's eyes. She had texted last night inquiring if he was available for an experiment today but refused to give any details beyond "you're going to love it." Molly liked a clean and organized work space (for that matter, so did Sherlock; he was just more literal about the space he actually worked in, while Molly extended her definition to the surrounding environment) and had threatened to take her mysterious body part back to the mortuary if she perceived "even the faintest possibility of cross-contamination with foodstuffs in that laboratory you call a kitchen."

Sherlock thought as long as he kept her away from the oven and its collection of dirty dishes, he would be okay. It was highly unlikely anything Molly brought him needed to be baked, whereas most biospecimens required refrigeration for storage. He'd cleared the entire lower shelf in anticipation (after a bacteria broth had overturned onto a box of lo mein and dripped into the vegetable bin, John insisted all biohazards go on the lowest shelf only) and set up his microscope in the center of the table where they each had room to work on either side. Sherlock was still debating whether he should move the scope to the small round table to free the main table for … whatever … when the doorbell rang.

Molly stood on the steps with her coat zipped and her pink-and-black striped scarf wrapped round her neck, holding a styrofoam cooler with bright orange biohazard labels.

"What is it?"

"Hello to you too, Sherlock." But she held out the cooler. "See for yourself."

He took it, climbing the stairs three at a time and prying off the lid as soon as he set the cooler on the kitchen table.

"Ohhh," he breathed.

"Isn't it great?" she called, just now coming into the flat.

Inside the cooler, carefully packed in dry ice, was a hand. A right hand, male by its size, and burned to a crisp—in places. In other places, the skin was white and shiny, with scattered blisters and a few areas of mere redness.

Molly had stopped to hang up her coat and scarf before joining him and now peered round his arm at her specimen. "First, second, and third degree burns all on the same appendage. I thought you'd like to examine the tissue for chemical analysis and cellular damage that might indicate the accelerant and heat of the fire."

"Yes! Yes, I would."

"All right. Let's get to work." Molly pulled the box of safety equipment towards her.

Sherlock accepted a pair of goggles, pushing them back onto his head, and turned to get additional supplies from a cupboard. "How did you manage to smuggle an entire hand out of the mortuary?"

"He donated his body to science," she said cheerfully, pulling on a pair of gloves and selecting a scalpel from the box he held out to her. "I read his chart. Healthy as a horse. I'm sure he didn't plan on dying in a house fire, but his body is much more interesting like this."

"Obviously."

One of the advantages of being six feet tall was the ability to look over other people's heads. Sherlock did so now with Molly, standing behind her as she made the first incision. She leaned forward to grab a mini rake retractor, and her bum pressed against his thigh.

Sherlock felt as if he'd been scorched.

"Oh!" Molly said, turning with an embarrassed smile. "I'm sorry."

"No, I—" He cleared his throat and stepped to the side. "I must have been standing too close."

She returned to her work, carefully excising samples from various regions for him to examine. Sherlock took the chair opposite, only to discover their height difference put him at eye-level with Molly's chest since she remained standing (no drugs in her bra today). He dropped his gaze to the hand itself.

"That looks like a liquid splash pattern," he said, indicating the irregular burn margins on the back of the hand.

"Yes. But from what?"

Something in her voice, just the slightest hint of uncharacteristic smugness, caught his attention.

"You already know the answer, don't you?"

She nodded, her long ponytail swinging with the motion. "I told you, he donated his body to science. He's already been examined by the medical students and the path house officers. I called dibs on the right hand."

So, she'd requested this hand specifically. Why?

"Was it the more burned of the two?"

"No."

"He was left-handed."

A wide smile. "Yes. His dominant hand was extensively burned as he used it to try to free himself. What else can you tell me about him?"

Sherlock accepted the challenge and bent over his samples, intent on finding out everything Molly knew through observation and experimentation.

()()()()

Having collected a sampling of the various types of tissue damage present, Molly began preparing slides for microscopic examination. It really would have been best to have had Sherlock come to the path lab, but she'd been looking for an excuse to come to Baker Street since she'd gone with Sherlock to the CO poisoning more than a month ago. He had been both infuriatingly oblivious and genuinely thoughtful that day, and Molly was dying to find out what he would be like when the two of them were alone together. Oh, he'd been into Barts since then, sometimes for a case and sometimes not, but even if John or Greg wasn't with him, there was always the chance they could be interrupted. Not to mention the more formal, professional atmosphere of a medical lab and mortuary. But today was an ordinary Wednesday morning, John was at the surgery, Sherlock had no pressing cases, and Molly had the day off since she had to work this weekend.

"Sherlock, can you—" A cover slip appeared in her field of vision. "Thanks."

He hovered over her shoulder, standing carefully to the side rather than behind her as he often did when they shared one microscope. If she stuck her elbow out ever-so-slightly, she would brush the fabric of his light blue dress shirt.

"Finished with the gross examination?" she asked.

"Yes."

"All right, take a look."

She passed him the first slide, and his fingers brushed the length of hers as he took it. Sherlock always moved with such deliberateness and precision there was no way that was an accident, much as he may have wanted it to appear so. Molly glanced at his face, but it was turned away from her as he fitted the slide into the clips.

She returned to slide prep, listening to Sherlock's observations and prompting him occasionally. He got bored with the slides quickly and pushed the hand in her direction.

"Dissect it."

Molly looked up in surprise. "You don't want to work with the burned tissue?"

"He was an idiot who poured lighter fluid over the wood in his fireplace and struck a match. I'd rather watch you work."

"How could you possibly know about the lighter fluid from microscopic examination?" she said, skipping over the part where Sherlock liked to watch her.

"I knew that from gross examination and chemical analysis. The splatter pattern, the residue … obvious."

Molly sighed. She had so hoped to challenge him today.

"The hand itself is interesting," Sherlock said quickly. "But he was an imbecile."

"Okay, well—" Molly brushed aside a stray piece of hair with her forearm, careful to keep her dirty gloves away from her face. "What do you want to do with the hand?"

"Can we look at the muscle? Compare it to the slides you brought right after I came home?"

"Disease versus trauma. Okay." Molly picked up the goggles Sherlock had laid aside when he sat down at the microscope and handed them back to him.

Sherlock moved the microscope out of the way, and she worked in silence for a few minutes, he having spent enough time with her in the mortuary to anticipate the different instruments she would need next and hand them to her. Molly was trying to expose the ulnar nerve, holding the muscle out of the way so she could see what she was doing, but without being attached to an arm, the hand was sliding all over the cutting board with every movement.

"Here," he said. But instead of simply reaching out to steady the specimen, he grasped the retractor with his left hand and placed his right arm around her to hold the hand in place. "Is that better?"

Molly shivered as his voice rumbled near her ear. He was, in effect, holding her, even if they weren't touching.

"Yes, that's—" A slow, deep breath. "Thank you, Sherlock."

Now free to use both hands for precision work, Molly made rapid progress, describing the structures as she went.

"Here's the insertion of the flexor pollicus longus muscle, which flexes the distal thumb joint," she said, leaning to one side so Sherlock could easily see over her shoulder. "We can't see the body of the muscle because it's located in the forearm. It's unique to humans."

Sherlock made a noise of interest and leaned forward. His face was very, very close, and Molly held very, very still.

"You can see the burn damage on the muscle here," he said, indicating the medial side of the hand.

"Yes, that's a deep tissue thickness burn."

"May I try?" Sherlock sat up, his right arm brushing her back as he withdrew it.

"Yes," Molly said, dropping the scalpel and forceps and pushing back from the table, relieved to put some distance between them.

"Where are you going?" he asked, looking up.

"I just—these goggles are bothering me," she fibbed, pulling them away from her face and rubbing the bridge of her nose.

Sherlock returned to the hand, extending her incisions. "Molly, what's this?"

"Hmm?" She bent forward, trying to see what he was referring to in the second finger, and their goggles bumped. She giggled and turned the half-inch to see him. "Sorry!"

But Sherlock wasn't smiling. He stared at her with the focused look of concentration he wore when working a problem. Molly had imagined what it would be like to be the object of the same scrutiny he gave to his work, but she had underestimated the intensity of the experience. She felt pinned, immobile, held in place by what she saw in his eyes. He was close enough she could see the faint beginnings of shadow along his jaw and the curve of individual lashes. Without thinking about it, she ran her tongue over suddenly dry lips.

His pupils dilated.

Molly stopped breathing. They hung like that a moment, staring into each other's eyes through scratched polycarbonate, Sherlock's hands still holding a scalpel and a burnt appendage and Molly's hands flat on the table. She didn't dare close the distance between them, didn't want to be the one to move first, to break the spell. His eyes danced all over her face, and she could almost _see_ him processing actions and reactions before he looked away and cleared his throat.

"Right here." He tapped the area he meant with the flat of the blade. "What's that?"

Molly took comfort in the slight tremble of the scalpel in Sherlock's hands even as she took a quiet breath to steady her own nerves.

"I, um, I'm in my own shadow. Hang on a second." She walked round the end of the table, leaning forward from the other side. "Let me see." She held out her hand and he turned the scalpel, slapping it neatly into her grip. "It's a fracture, I think—yeah. The proximal phalanx."

"In the fire?" He was shooting her little glances now, looking away before she could catch his eye.

Molly smiled to reassure him but didn't look up, giving him the space he needed. "No, this has already healed." She handed the knife back to him and made a show of stretching her back. "So, tell me about the lighter fluid. What did you test it with?"

Sherlock latched onto the distraction at once, pulling over the chemicals he'd used and explaining his process. The awkwardness between them passed, and once they had demolished the hand to Sherlock's satisfaction, Molly let him show off for her by imploding an aluminum can (A-level chemistry, but a cool trick nonetheless). By the time she left Baker Street some time later with a cooler of mangled hand parts and a bag of chemical waste to dispose of at Barts, they had returned to their usual familiar ease. Molly didn't know exactly what had happened when their goggles bumped, but she knew this:

It hadn't been her imagination.

()()()()

"Well?" Molly said anxiously.

It was ten days before Christmas, and Molly had returned from what had become a weekly dinner with Mary to find Sherlock in her flat, ready to share his opinion of the third draft of the paper she was planning to submit to the _Journal of Clinical Pathology_.

"Your conclusion is too wordy," he said. "The results of your research were unambiguous, and the implications are clear. You're dancing around the issue—just say you've found a better way to do it. The rest of the paper backs you up."

"Okay." Molly handed him a pen from her desk, and he marked out several sentences.

"And here—" He flipped back several pages. "I didn't understand what you meant by this. Is it because I don't have the necessary background knowledge, or do you need to explain it better?"

Molly placed a hand on his shoulder and leaned in to read where he indicated. "I think it's clear, but I'll get John to read it just in case. Anything else? Typos or anything?"

"None that I noticed, but I didn't review your bibliography."

"Would you, please? As many as I've done over the years, I still have a hard time proofreading them." Commas and full stops and colons; Molly had a hard time keeping straight what went where, which titles belonged in quotes and which in italics, especially when she was doing a whole list of citations.

He nodded. "I think you need another chart of your results here," he said, tapping a long paragraph full of technical information. "It would be much easier to see the correlations if the data were presented visually."

"I thought of that, but I'm worried it will make the layout too difficult if I add another chart."

"That's the editor's problem. Send it in—they can always cut it if they can't work with it."

"Okay." Molly accepted the papers back and flipped through them, skimming the notes he'd written in the margins. "Thanks for doing this, Sherlock. I really appreciate it."

"I'm glad to see you publishing again. You should do it more often."

"It isn't published yet."

"It will be."

She smiled at his easy confidence and laid everything aside before joining him on the sofa.

"What are you doing for Christmas this year?"

He made a face. "My mother insists on hosting a family celebration. She says I owe her for getting shot."

"That will be nice."

"No, it will be nothing short of torture. Mycroft will be there too."

Molly poked his thigh with her foot. "You have a family who cares about you. You should be grateful, Sherlock Holmes." He missed the allusion to her orphan status, and she let it slide.

"What about you? Are you working?" he asked.

"I'm on call the twenty-fifth, but there shouldn't be any problems." Especially if Sherlock and Mycroft were out of town under the supervision of their mother. "Meena has invited me to have dinner with her and her family, but I haven't decided yet."

"You should go," he said. "You'd have a good time. Better than just watching the Beeb with Toby."

"I don't know. I like Meena, but I've never met her family before."

"I'd invite you, but…."

"Oh, that's all right," Molly said quickly, understanding—even if Sherlock didn't—the implications of him inviting a woman home for Christmas. "Your mother's right. A family celebration this year is best."

"It's not that," Sherlock said. "If all goes as planned, I will be working."

"A case? On Christmas? Sherlock," Molly protested.

He said nothing, not even to scoff at her sentiment about the holiday. There was only one case he'd been reticent about this year.

"It's Magnussen, isn't it? I thought you gave that case up."

"Of course I didn't give it up," he said, leaning to the side as Toby approached the sofa and jumped up between them. "I just had to wait for the right opportunity, and it happens to be on Christmas Day."

She sighed, stroking Toby's head as he draped himself over her legs. "Well, I want you to be careful. He's—if even half the stuff that came out in the inquest is true, he's a dangerous man, Sherlock."

"So am I."

Looking at him now, the set jaw, the resolute expression, Molly believed it. Still….

"Promise me you'll be careful."

Sherlock relaxed, turning his back into the corner to face her. "John will be with me."

"Fine, then I want the two of you to be careful. Wait—John's going to your parents' for Christmas?"

He nodded. "He and Mary both."

"Both of them? Mary didn't say. Well, that's good, isn't it?"

"Eh. He's been less moody but still unusually quiet. I think he's finally prepared to forgive her."

Molly squealed. "You think the two of them will get back together?"

"Don't tell Mary—John hasn't actually said anything."

"I won't. I wouldn't want her to be disappointed. She's been miserable these last few months, though, even with her excitement about the baby."

"So has John." Sherlock sighed. "But I have enjoyed having a flatmate again."

Molly smiled. "You two just need to figure out a new routine. You're Sherlock Holmes, you'll come up with something."

()()()()

Mummy left the kitchen to take Mary her (drugged) tea. Sherlock noted the time on his wristwatch, then folded the newspaper he'd been reading and tossed it onto the table, hiding the headline of Lord Smallwood's suicide. He would like nothing more than to rub his arrogant brother's nose in the results of his so-called "protection," but Sherlock's plan to end Magnussen's power over others today depended on Mycroft's lack of suspicion. And Wiggins's calculations, and John bringing his gun, and Magnussen honoring their agreement, and Sherlock's own deductions about Appledore, and the information Mary had supplied, and myriad of other factors out of his control. It was a highly dangerous, unpredictable, yet necessary course of action, and one which Sherlock was determined to see to its conclusion, whatever the results. Ironic, that Molly Hooper knew him better than his own brother.

Ironic, but not surprising.

Sherlock double-checked that Mycroft was preoccupied with his inspection of the Christmas sweets Mummy had left unguarded on the table and slipped his phone out of his pocket. It had buzzed earlier, but Sherlock had not needed to look at the screen to know who sent the text. Everyone who might text him on Christmas Day was already here; everyone except Molly. Sherlock punched the button to light up the screen and read her message.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, SHERLOCK! HUMOR YOUR MUM TODAY—SHE'S EARNED IT.

Molly had "decorated" her text with a smiley face, three smiley faces wearing Father Christmas hats, a cone-shaped party hat surrounded by confetti, and five Christmas trees. Sherlock felt one corner of his mouth turn up. She'd been deliberately ridiculous to make him smile. He thumbed a quick reply.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, MOLLY HOOPER.

Then, because Molly deserved the extra effort, Sherlock did something he'd never done before. He tapped the smiley-face button at the bottom of the on-screen keyboard and scrolled past an appalling variety of disembodied expressions, cartoonish hand gestures, and assorted animals before he found what he was looking for. With a final glance to make sure no one was watching (Mycroft was busy rearranging the tarts on the tray so it wasn't obvious one was missing), Sherlock added a single Christmas tree emoji and hit send.

Hours later, kneeling outside the glass walls of Appledore with his hair and scarf blown by the wash of the helicopter rotors, Mycroft's panicked voice bellowing over the speakers as the red dots of laser sights danced over Sherlock's face and chest, Sherlock had the cold comfort that at least he'd been kind in what was mostly likely his last interaction with Molly Hooper.


End file.
